MARION RANDALL 


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A DAUGHTER OF 
THE DAWN 













A DAUGHTER OF 
THE DAWN 


BY 

MARION RANDALL PARSONS 

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SvMVAD-ais 


BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1923 













Copyright, 192S, 

By Marion Randall Parsons. 


All rights reserved 
Published April, 1923 


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Printed in the United States of America 

APR 3 0 *23 ' 

©C1A705201 



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BEN LEHMAN 

AND 


GLADYS and HAL 


CONTENTS 


PART I 

AURORA (1880) 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Liliha Goes Down to the Sea. 3 

II Of a Race of Kings. 15 

III White and Brown .28 

IV Liliha Charts Her Sea. 45 

V Old Gregory Speaks .55 

VI Superstition’s Wing.65 

VII Liliha Sets Sail.80 

PART II 

MERIDIAN (1900) 

VIII New Year’s Eve .95 

IX Liliha Reappears .112 

X Turn of the Tide.125 

XI At the Ebb .141 

XII Scorn of Men .153 

PART III 

CREPUSCULE (1920) 

XIII The Rising Generation. 171 

XIV Gypsy Blood .195 

vii 














CONTENTS 


• • • 

via 

chapter paob 

XV Island Lure. 209 

XVI Liliha Counts Her Cards. 226 

XVII Young Gregory Speaks. 241 

XVIII Liliha Plays Her Trump.260 

XIX Toward a New Day. 273 






PART ONE 


AURORA (1880) 














CHAPTER I 


LILIHA GOES DOWN TO THE SEA 

Across the crest of the headland an almost 
imperceptible trail led down among stiff guava 
bushes and sprawling lauhalas to the ocean shore. 
Young Philip Howard, hesitating at the intersec¬ 
tion of two paths, chose the better-defined track 
to the left. It led him for a scant two hundred 
feet along the ridge to the brink of a low cliff that 
he had noticed from the schooner the day before. 
Seaward the sky already glowed with dawn, but 
landward a dark mountain wall withheld the light 
from the town, sleeping below him in a green nest 
between mountains and sea. On the long white 
beach houses crept out among ragged cocoanut 
palms close to the surf line. As yet no human 
being was astir there. Even the dogs that had 
slunk after him, sniffing distrust of his early ram¬ 
ble, had disappeared. Sleep, that had so long 
forsaken him, had waved an enchanter’s wand 
over the Island. No birds stirred. The sea 
breathed deep, breaking against the shore in slow 
ripples unflecked with foam. Only beyond the 
headland, where a reef stretched across a cove, the 
blue swells broke into surging white. Except for 
the low roar from this reef there was no sound. 


4 


A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


Turning his back upon the town, Philip Howard 
crossed the headland and sank down in a little 
hollow deep among ferns and creeping vines. He 
clasped hands behind his head and lay there wait¬ 
ing for his first Island sunrise. The cove at his 
feet was bordered by a beach of white sand. 
Above it a tangle of tropical undergrowth crept 
straight up the mountain wall. High peaks rose 
purple against the dawn, no break visible in their 
dense vegetation from shore line to the masses of 
volcanic rock that formed their crowns. A lumi¬ 
nous glow aureoled the summits though the hot, 
still night had been dewless. Howard wondered 
if to the weatherwise the bank of pearly clouds 
along the horizon presaged a storm. 

The young man lay motionless, his long slender 
body relaxed in languorous ease. His mind, never¬ 
theless, was busy, shaping a host of new impres¬ 
sions into words. It was an old habit of his 
boyhood, dating from the first separation from 
little Lucy, his neighbor, who, before he had 
reached his twenty-third year, had grown from 
comrade to sweetheart and "wife. The habit per¬ 
sisted now though it brought him only the sharp¬ 
est pain. For Lucy had died with their baby and 
at twenty-four he was facing life alone. In spite 
of the seven empty months that had passed he had 
not yet lost the sense of her physical presence. 
He still unconsciously treasured up for her ear all 
the rarest experiences of his voyage, — his voyage 
in search of forgetfulness! His father had been 
wrong, he felt, in urging upon him this complete 


AURORA 


5 


break with the old life. He sometimes believed 
that had he forced himself to endure the daily 
reminder of familiar things his mind might have 
been more quickly dulled into acceptance of his 
loss. 

For the moment, indeed, steeped in the narcotic 
beauty of the tropical dawn, he was half forgetful 
of his sorrow. The lassitude of many sleepless 
nights was heavy upon him. He felt his body one 
with the Island earth, — verdant earth, hiding a 
burned-out heart of ashes. The sincerity of his 
grief rebuked the rhetoric. Lucy’s image blurred 
the sunrise. He turned and covered his eyes with 
his hands. 

As he lay in the ferns with face hidden he 
became conscious of a woman’s voice singing. 
Youth was in it, and a low, full resonance like the 
sea. He raised his head to listen. In spite of him¬ 
self he smiled at the incongruity of the old hymn 
tune, at the adjuration, in the face of this dolce far 
niente dawn to “ work for the night is coming.” 

In another moment he saw the singer. She 
emerged from the trees at the point where he had 
hesitated over the trail. She too paused there. 
For whatever reason she looked, not forward, but 
back down the path to the town. Howard sud¬ 
denly recognized her. It was Liliha, the half- 
caste girl who had waited at his aunt’s supper 
table the night before. Instead of her trim-fitting 
maid’s dress she wore a loose garment of calico, 
but he could not be mistaken in the shape and 
carriage of her head. A young queen, he had 


6 


A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


likened her to in the lamplight, half pitying her 
for her servant’s role. She was even more like a 
young queen now, standing there in the rosy glow 
of sunrise with a wreath of scarlet flowers on her 
head. Could she, by any chance, be following him? 
The thought repelled him. He sank down closer 
into his nest among the ferns. 

As if satisfied by her scrutiny, Liliha turned 
into the half-hidden trail. Her hymn changed to a 
chant, a wild stirring strain that awakened respon¬ 
sive thrills in the listening man. She ran swiftly 
down the short path, breaking through the bushes 
to the open sands. Waving a blithe hand at the 
sun, just striking through a notch in the mountain 
chain, she kicked off her loose slippers with a 
dancing step. There was a whirl of pink calico 
over her lei-crowned head. Naked as Aphrodite 
she ran, brow arms outstretched, straight into 
the arms of the deep-breathing, welcoming sea. 

As Philip Howard walked back from the 
headland toward Mrs. Adams’s cottage on 
Wahainalua’s principal street, this temporary 
home of his assumed an unexpected interest. 
From his evening’s talk with the aunt and uncle 
whom he never before had met, he had anticipated 
little but boredom from his position as their guest. 
To his darkened spirit only dreariness had been 
manifest in their childless, work-engrossed age. 
Now, with the dawn vision fresh upon him, a boy¬ 
ish expectancy robbed the morning meeting with 
them of its prospective gloom; more than that, 


AURORA 


7 


transmuted it into drama. Who could have 
thought to find, as handmaid in a missionary 
household, a dryad who danced her greeting to 
the sun! 

The breakfast table was already set in a comer 
of the bare, cool sitting room. His aunt, a lean 
wiry little person who pursued even spiritual ends 
with the talkative assiduity of a sparrow picking 
up crumbs, hung over the table, arranging a pyra¬ 
mid of native fruits and placing beside his plate a 
polished wooden bowl filled with a pastry sub¬ 
stance that she called poi. 

“ You may not like it,” she cautioned him, “ but 
we grew to depend on it in the early days when 
there was often little else.” 

She drew back from her ministrations and 
looked up into the grave eyes of the young man. 

“ How like you are to your father, Philip! ” she 
said with a hint of regret. “ And Sister Mary’s 
girl — is she unlike my family too? ” 

“ No,” said Philip, touched by the look in his 
aunt’s eyes. He had thought her singularly unin¬ 
terested in the home and family she had not seen 
for so many years. “ Minnie is a little red-head, 
but the picture of Aunt Mary for all that.” 

“ Ah,” said Abigail Adams with a faint sigh. 
“ We miss contact with young people here. 
We ’re all old now — all old! ’’ 

A question concerning the girl who served her 
rose to Philip’s lips, but the entrance of the master 
of the house prevented his giving it utterance. 
Peter Adams was a large, loose-limbed old man 


8 


A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


with a rugged New England face. After a short 
good morning he led the way to the breakfast 
table and at once sat down. During the long grace 
Philip found his thoughts again wandering, with 
growing anticipation, to the lithe brown swimmer 
at the cove. 

To his disappointment, however, the coffee was 
brought in by a white-starched Chinaman. With 
a wry face over his poi, Philip helped himself to 
the golden corn bread. 

“ Not much like early times now, I fancy,” he 
said, as the servant once more left them alone. 
“ You seem to be well fixed here. You have a 
housemaid too, haven’t you, Aunt Abigail? ” 

Abigail Adams misunderstood her nephew’s 
curiosity concerning her domestic economy. 

“We have every comfort, but at little expense,” 
she said. “ I have no housemaid. Liliha, who is 
a pupil in my school, comes in occasionally to help 
me as I require. It would not be rendering a fair 
account of our blessings were Peter and I lightly 
to spend the money contributed for our holy 
labor.” 

Philip’s lean, sensitive face flushed. “No such 
impertinent criticism crossed my mind, Aunt 
Abbie. I had forgotten for the moment that 
the American Board no longer supports your 
mission.” 

“ Your father has been most liberal, Philip. 
Even after your dear mother died he continued 
the yearly sum she had always given toward the 
Lord’s work. The American Board withdrew its 


AURORA 


9 


support ten years ago. But it was a part of the 
Divine plan that we should continue to labor in 
the field tilled by us for twenty years.’’ 

Long-forgotten impressions began to come back 
to Philip’s mind, — old discussions relating to this 
missionary household. It was to combat the grow¬ 
ing influence of the Anglican church, he remem¬ 
bered, no less vicious in his mother’s eyes than 
that of the Roman Catholic mission, that she had 
endowed her sister’s little private school for 
native girls. His mother, another such tensely 
religious woman as her elder sister Abigail, had 
regarded this long-exiled sister as a saint. Even 
he, of a generation that was fast outgrowing the 
Puritan dogma, could see in Abigail one ready to 
sacrifice comfort, inclination, life itself to the call 
of her duty and her creed. But the very convic¬ 
tion of her sincerity sharpened his new sense of 
the clash between the ideal of the missionaries’ 
efforts and the pagan reality of the wild natures 
they sought to civilize. 

“ Tell me about your school, Aunt Abbie,” he 
said abruptly. “ Tell me about this girl, Liliha, 
whom you called a hapa-haole. What do you mean 
by that? ” 

“ Haole — stranger; a white,” said Peter 
Adams. “ A hapa-haole is a half-white. Liliha’s 
father was an Englishman.” 

“ Your coffee is getting cold, Peter,” Abigail 
admonished him, eager to tell the story of her 
school herself. The young man listened silently 
to the outpouring of her enthusiasm, really inter- 


10 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

ested only in what bore relation to Liliha. Under 
Mrs. Adams’s effort and guidance, he learned, a 
dozen brands had been saved from the burning, a 
dozen Hawaiian and half-caste girls had evaded 
the snare of false doctrines, had grown to woman¬ 
hood not only blessed with all the womanly vir¬ 
tues beloved of the seventies, but by their “ seri¬ 
ousness ” giving satisfactory evidence of true 
conversion. Foremost among these spiritual off¬ 
spring, first in accomplishments and Christian 
devotion, was Liliha. 

Though familiar to him from his earliest child¬ 
hood, the evangelical patter fell mockingly now on 
Philip Howard’s ears. How reconcile his mer¬ 
maid of the sunrise with the picture of Christian 
decorum drawn by his aunt? With a smile too 
bitter for his years he repressed the boyish inclina¬ 
tion to reveal to Mrs. Adams before the altars of 
what gods her protegee had offered up a matin 
song. 

The fun of horrifying the good lady would not 
compensate for the stain with which her imputa¬ 
tion would besmirch the fair, pure image of his 
dryad of the dawn. Beneath Howard’s Puritan 
training lay the artist, the taster of life in its 
entirety, the worshiper of beauty oblivious to the 
tabus of Sin. Every fiber of the artist in him had 
thrilled to that sunrise scene. The girl’s brown 
body leaping into the opal sea; her pagan chant 
of exultation; her daring plunge through the 
breakers of the reef and the vigor of her round 
limbs as they defied the heavier swell, — these had 


AURORA 


11 


revived in him youth’s warm zest in mere living as 
neither earthly nor heavenly consolation hitherto 
had done. But instinct and training united to 
warn him that these two good old people would 
see in this same zest of living only the blackest of 
sin. Silence was his defense no less than the 
girl’s. After all, perhaps, he really had mistaken 
her identity. His aunt’s praise, piling Puritan 
doctrine higher upon native womanly worth, 
almost convinced him that this must be the case. 
As they were rising from the table, however, 
Liliha herself appeared, framed in the sunlight 
of the open door. 

There was no mistake. Liliha of the Evangeli¬ 
cal School, sometime servant to the missionaries, 
and the vision of the dawn were one. A decent 
straw hat, which she removed from her head to 
use as a fan, replaced the scarlet lei; hut the loose 
slippers on her bare feet and the pink calico 
holoku challenged his amused recognition. He 
scrutinized her closely as she stood in the door¬ 
way. Liliha was almost as tall as he was himself, 
slender, yet delicately rounded. Her ears were 
exquisite, — Lucy’s ears. But Lucy’s fair hair 
had been piled high and Liliha wore her dark 
tresses braided in a coronet around her head. 
Her skin was a clear warm brow, scarcely darker 
than that of many a brunette of pure Caucasian 
strain. Only in her eyes the Kanaka showed — 
large liquid brown eyes, opaque and soulless, as 
gentle and unresponsive as the eyes of an Alder¬ 
ney cow. She looked him over with frank curi- 


12 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

osity, smiling at him brightly and impersonally 
as she smiled her morning salutation to Fat 
Leong or the yellow tabby cat. 

The two women, after a few sentences together 
and a brief consultation with the cook, withdrew to 
their morning household tasks. Turning over in 
his mind the girl’s demure passage of words with 
his aunt, Howard wondered, as he was destined to 
wonder many a time in the years to come, how 
much was conscious actress in her, how much 
unconscious mimicry. 

Freed from his wife’s loquacity, Doctor Adams 
in his turn became talkative. From him Howard 
gained a still piously colored, but more concrete 
account of Liliha’s history. Her father had been 
a runaway sailor from a whaling ship, an English¬ 
man named Knight who apparently had known 
better days. He made little effort to provide for 
his children; indeed little provision was necessary 
in a land where poi and fish were easily come by 
and the sun and the sea and a grass hut were free 
to all. The missionaries, for decency’s sake, kept 
the family supplied with clothes, and it was not 
difficult for a man who could write a legible hand 
and for whom ciphering was not a dubious matter 
of fingers, but a swift cogitation and a sure result, 
to earn enough money for gin and tobacco. Knight 
died when Liliha, the only survivor of the children, 
was eight years old. Hana, the mother, soon took 
a Hawaiian husband, marrying him at the mission 
and achieving thereby, Howard was amused to 
note, a deferred respectability that in the doctor’s 


AURORA 


13 


eyes atoned for all past irregularities. Toward 
the brood of Hawaiian half-brethren Liliha showed 
not the least sense of superiority, proud though 
she was of her own haole ancestry. She was a 
good-natured girl and a generous one, her pastor 
said. 

To Howard, Doctor Adams’s account of the girl 
rang with the same unreality as sounded in that 
of his aunt. In the eyes of both elders Liliha was 
a passive creature, accepting without question 
every precept they held out to her, including 
repression of her youthful joy in life. It was obvi¬ 
ous from the morning’s adventure that in spite of 
all their teaching the pagan in Liliha was still far 
from wholly downed. Howard felt that more had 
been revealed to him of the true Liliha than her 
teachers had understood in seventeen years. 
Their repressive gray philosophy could have no 
real part in her. She radiated life and a sensuous 
love of physical things. To a Puritan mind, of 
course, that betokened only the devil. To him, on 
the contrary, the sin was to deny the clean beau¬ 
tiful youth in her. Love of the sun and the sea 
were of her very essence. Wind caresses on her 
young body were as natural to her as her mother’s 
touch. How stupid of these good people — how 
wicked, almost — not to understand! 

In the image that he thus conjured up in the 
name of Liliha passion held no place. She was not 
Aphrodite as he had first named her, but cool 
chaste Diana, — in that, to his present mood, lay 
her extraordinary charm. 


14 


A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


From Liliha Doctor Adams branched to the 
general subject of his mission and its accomplish¬ 
ment, a dreary theme to succeed to the vital inter¬ 
est of the girl. Weariness of spirit descended 
upon Howard. The cool interior of the cottage 
became more stiflingly oppressive to him than the 
glaring heat out of doors. Reminding himself of 
a promise to call on Tom Gregory, his shipmate 
on the voyage down from San Francisco, he made 
his excuses to Doctor Adams and stepped with a 
sigh of relief into the sunny street. 


CHAPTER II 


OF A RACE OF KINGS 

“ Come early! ” Tom Gregory had pleaded, in 
suggesting this informal morning call. “ I’ll need 
some one to give me a breathing spell from the 
raptures of my all too adoring Ma.” 

Attracted as he was by the lad whose high spir¬ 
its had lightened the long days at sea, Howard’s 
keenest anticipation in the visit centered about 
Tom’s mother. For Kameolani Gregory was a 
Hawaiian princess, daughter of a royal chieftain’s 
daughter who had married a white. Young Tom 
had boasted much of this ancient alii strain; of the 
charm of his mother, her beauty, and superiority 
to any woman wholly Caucasian. He had not seen 
her for three years, during his absence at school. 

Howard’s fancy played around the Island prin¬ 
cess as he left his aunt’s cottage behind. Would 
she be as beautiful as Liliha ?■—It would seem good 
to hear Tom’s gay chatter again. Already he was 
looking to the Gregory household as a haven of 
escape from the dullness of the little town. 

Even now, at ten o’clock, Wahainalua did not 
look fully awake. Blank shutters barred the win¬ 
dows; vine-shaded lanais were empty of life. 
Only a Chinese vegetable vendor, balancing two 
heavily laden baskets on a pole across his shoul- 


16 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


ders, and an old Hawaiian sleepily surveying the 
beach from his garden gate braved the sun that 
glared in the white coral street. The hibiscus 
hedges and bougainvillaea vines seemed to Philip 
to draw the sun’s heat into their scarlet blossoms 
and breathe it out on him as he passed. 

Challenging each other across the street rose the 
white spires of the Anglican and the Roman 
Catholic churches. The parish house of the latter 
was enclosed by a high wall built of coral stone. 
So close beside the wall that it seemed to be 
crouching under the shadow, stood Doctor 
Adams’s modest little chapel of wood where 
Liliha’s decorous devotions were paid. Christian¬ 
ity, Howard reflected, would have presented an 
impregnably strong front in Wahainalua had not 
its forces been spent in fierce dissension within its 
ranks. Bewildered paganism might well be for¬ 
given for a divided allegiance to this three-faced 
God of the haoles. 

Howard’s thoughts went back to the Adams cot¬ 
tage, to his undefined disappointment of the even¬ 
ing before at finding his aunt’s resemblance to his 
mother all on the least congenial side. No hope 
there of a new affection, a new bond for the empty 
future; no chance of a common meeting-ground. 
In his present mood every word the old missionary 
and his wife uttered only increased the burden 
already laid upon an overstrained faith. Their 
house of God was not his. His own temple of life 
was holy to him though to them it might appear 
a godless house of sand. Their consolations 


AURORA 


17 


sounded like the emptiest cant. More than that, 
it shocked him to have an outrageous stroke of 
blind, meaningless fate distorted into the wise 
act of a merciful and beneficent God. He could 
not without a sense of desecration hear his souPs 
agony spoken of as a manifestation of the Divine 
Will. 

He shook off the bitter thoughts that possessed 
him and tried to interest himself in the drowsy 
hamlet, obviously fallen from a former prosper¬ 
ity. The street was a short one, with a group of 
one-storied shop buildings clustered near the 
beach at the farther end. Most of the dwellings, 
like the Adams cottage, were unpretentious 
structures of whitewashed wood. Many houses 
were vacant. Only a handful of white people, and 
those of lowly caste, were scattered among the 
native shoppers in the rank-smelling fish market, 
the busiest spot in town. 

At the end of the street just beyond the market 
Howard paused to get his bearings. Evidently he 
must leave the beach here and follow the road up 
the hill in order to reach the headland where the 
plantation house stood. From the schooner Rosa¬ 
lie's deck the day before young Gregory had 
pointed out his father’s home, a square, two- 
storied house of stone, half hidden in a grove of 
mangoes that crowned a peninsula a mile or so 
south of the town. 

As Philip climbed the slope above Wahainalua 
he glanced back where the headland, scene of his 
morning adventure, jutted into the sea. The surf 


18 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


was breaking against it now, long curling waves 
tumbling fast and high under the whip of a rising 
wind. He had been listening to this wind as it 
played through the fields of rustling cane, but 
now, thinking of his Island nymph, he heard only 
the echo of her voice in the diapason of wind and 
sea. 

He started on again. Ahead the widening pan¬ 
orama revealed a fact that he had hitherto failed 
to notice: the jagged mountain chain behind the 
town was wholly detached from the great volcano, 
higher than the clouds, that from the ship had 
appeared to form the whole northern end of the 
Island. The peninsula on which the Gregory 
house stood was merely the end of this coast chain, 
where the lesser mountains broke down into the 
sea. From its crest the fire-mountain rose before 
him, a vast cone, bluer than the midmorning blue 
of the ocean, tapering upward into slopes of bare 
rock flecked with snow and broadening at the base 
into a smooth expanse of emerald green. 

At the Gregory’s gate, before entering the 
avenue of dark Norfolk Island pines that led to 
the house, Philip paused to gaze again at the dis¬ 
tant pinnacle of snow. It stirred the dreamer in 
him, this ancient, burned-out volcano, aloof, myste¬ 
rious, brooding over the illimitable tropic sea. 
“ On the hills like gods together,” he quoted, 
smiling a little to himself. A lotus land, indeed! 
In its Elysian valleys might he find not forgetful¬ 
ness, but peace. 

Howard came upon the father and son sitting 


AURORA 


19 


together in the wide front lanai. Thomas Gregory 
the elder gave his son’s friend a quick scrutiny 
under a pair of bushy brows. 

“ Mighty glad to see you, Mr. Howard,” he said 
cordially. “ Tom, go fetch your mother and tell 
Sing to bring us a lemonade. — Sit here, Mr. 
Howard, where you can get a breath of air. ’ ’ 

With pantherlike ease Tom swung himself over 
the lanai railing and disappeared around the 
corner of the house. Thomas Gregory looked 
after his son with a sigh. Now that the smile that 
brightened his face so pleasantly had vanished, 
Philip was struck by his heavy, pasty look. His 
abundant brown hair and beard were streaked 
with gray. His white duck suit, though undoubt¬ 
edly fresh that morning, was already creased and 
wrinkled by his huge, unwieldly form. Howard 
could see in him no least resemblance to the slim, 
dark-eyed son. 

“ Let me tell you right now how happy I am 
that you’ve struck up a friendship with my boy,” 
he said. “ You mustn’t let him bore you — I 
know a lad of eighteen is no companion for a 
young man like you — but any time you can spare 
him will mean more than you’ll ever know. He 
has no fit associates here of his own age. But the 
youngster wouldn’t stay away longer without a 
sight of his mother. I had to take the chance.” 

The turn of the phrase struck Howard oddly. 
He replied with a cordiality that brought a look 
of pleasure to Gregory’s eyes: 

“ Far from boring me, Tom’s companionship 


20 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


will double my enjoyment here, Mr. Gregory. 
We’ve become jolly good friends.” 

“ So Tom seems to think. I’m glad the feeling 
isn’t all on his side. This is your first visit to the 
Islands, I understand. I had the pleasure of meet¬ 
ing your father here once, some fifteen years ago. 
Are you following him in the practice of law? ” 

“ I’ve been admitted to the bar. I’ve not prac¬ 
ticed yet — I hardly know-” Philip broke off 

and changed the subject abruptly. He could not 
yet bring himself to speak without emotion of the 
interrupted future that had stretched before him 
so brightly only a few months before. “ My 
father was fascinated by his visit here, short as 
it was.” 

The older man’s face darkened. “ Ah, well! 
Wahainalua’s not the place it used to be. The 
whaling fleet, that made us, is a thing of the past. 
We export a little coffee still, a little sugar, a little 
koa; but even your uncle’s business is on the down 
grade.” 

Philip smiled. “ The mission? It does seem a 
bit overshadowed by the Cross.” 

Gregory’s fist pounded the arm of his chair. 
44 You’ve hit it, young man! The Cross -in 
Wahainalua has the Gospel on the run. And 
why? Your uncle’s full of bitterness — thinks the 
growing power of the Anglican Church is only a 
political game of England’s with annexation as 
the goal. But by George, it goes deeper than that! 
The Cross makes it its business to consider the 
limitations of the native mind. It adapts, it 



AURORA 


21 


doesn’t impose- Ah, Kameolani! This is 

Tom’s friend, Mr. Howard. Is that heathen ever 
going to bring us some lemonade? ” 

Howard was conscious of sharp disappointment. 
The Island princess was beautiful, beyond a doubt, 
but redundantly, overpoweringly so, like a flower 
with too heavy a scent. From Tom and still more 
from Liliha he had conceived the half-castes as 
creatures of essential grace. They were the wood 
winds in the cosmic orchestra, lineal descendants 
of pipers in the groves of Pan. It had not 
occurred to him that these Island fauns and dry¬ 
ads might be subject to the catastrophe of middle 
age. 

Kameolani seated herself heavily. Her starched 
wdiite ruffles billowed widely around her rocking- 
chair. Her bare elbows, toned like old ivory, 
drooped limply over the wicker chair arms to 
allow her uncorseted body to sink unconstricted 
into the depths. Dark eyes and strong white 
teeth both smiled at the young man over a slow- 
waving palm-leaf fan. 

“ He is coming, Thomas,” she said, in a rich 
lazy voice that lingered almost imperceptibly on 
the vowel sounds. “ Tom, love, bring me over 
that stool for my feet.” 

Tom placed the stool and, sinking down on the 
lanai steps beside her, rested his bare dark head 
against her knee. Her hand brushed his temple 
lightly. He looked up at her with eyes of laughing 
tenderness. 

Thomas Gregory rose creakingly from his chair. 



22 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


“ Goldarn that Chinaman! ” he growled and made 
for the door. A clink of glasses checked him. 
‘ ‘ About time! ’ 9 

A young China boy, beady eyes on the stranger, 
passed a tray of Apollinaris lemonade. Kameo- 
lani took a glass and placidly dropped into it six 
lumps of sugar. 

“ Oh, Mums, I say! ” remonstrated Tom. “ Six 
lumps! No wonder you Ve put on weight! 99 

“ It has been always so — the six lumps / 9 his 
mother responded, unruffled. “ So many things 
you forget about me! High time, indeed, that you 
came home. ’ 9 

Thomas Gregory set down his glass abruptly. 
4 4 You and Tom must have some horseback trips 
together, Mr. Howard — the mountain affords un¬ 
usual opportunity for such adventure. You swim, 
I hope? Of course, then, you’ll want to try that 
rare sport of ours — riding the surf.” 

“ Oh, dad! He’s come for a rest,” objected 
Tom. Rising from the steps he stretched his arms 
lazily over his head. “ And so have I.” 

“ Rest! ” said Gregory grimly. “ Much rest 
you need! As far as I can learn your chief activ¬ 
ity has been the stage. I don’t know what your 
principal is thinking of. In my day boys went to 
school to study, not to produce cheap plays. Lady 
of Lyons, indeed! I’ll write Carpenter what I 
think.” 

‘‘Cheap! Booth plays it — I had his part. 
Can’t you understand that we acted outside of 


AURORA 


23 


school hours? You don’t seem to half appreciate 
what an awful mill I’ve been through! Mums 
knows that to get ready for college this year I had 
to study myself pretty nearly into a decline.— 
Come along up to my diggings, Howard. I want 
to show you my swag. ’ ’ 

Philip followed him readily enough. The 
glimpse he had gained of the interior through the 
open door had fascinated him. In that period of 
hectic upholstery, when American Lares and 
Penates were smothered in plush and choked with 
gilding and every exposed plane presented some 
new horror of the decorator’s zeal, these clean 
bare surfaces of polished wood, covering walls, 
ceilings and floors alike, were as restful to sensi¬ 
tive eyes as the stripped simplicity of some old 
chateau. Here not even tapestries nor carvings 
distracted the eye. Mats of braided straw were 
the only coverings on the floors. Chairs and 
divans were of wicker, for the most part. The 
tables and bedsteads, all of the simplest design, 
had been made by local Chinese carpenters from 
native woods. 

The great polished wooden bowls that filled a 
variety of household purposes Philip had already 
admired in Mrs. Adams’s home. Tom called his 
attention to one that stood near the foot of the 
stairs. 

“ Old Along Chung, our cook, nearly wept over 
this calabash,” he said. “ It’s from a Chinese 
tree — made from a log of driftwood cast up on 
this island by a storm. There’s the subject for a 


24 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

poem in that — eh, Howard? A century-long 
cruise, perhaps, before it came to port. ’ 9 
Unlike the rest of the house, Tom’s room was 
littered with curios — a curio shop — a museum 
of Polynesian art. Philip stood looking about him, 
directing his steps at length toward an outlandish 
article that stood in a corner. 

“ A broomstick crowned w T ith feathers!” he 
commented. 6 ‘ What on earth is the thing ? ’ ’ 

Tom already curled up in an easy chair, was 
nursing a foot in one hand. 

“ You don’t have to look at my junk,” he re¬ 
monstrated. “ I only came here to blow cold on 
the governor’s passion for exercise. He loathes 
my stuff so that he’ll rarely set foot here, sc we’re 
safe for a while. You don’t like horsebacking it, 
do you? Sleeping out and all those bores? ” 

“ I do,” said Howard, “ and so ought you. 
You ’re lazy as the devil, Tom. I mean to go every¬ 
where your father suggests. Wake up and come 
tell me what these things are.” 

44 Oh, Lord! ” groaned Tom. “ Such energy! ” 
He slipped out of his chair and came over to 
Howard’s side. “ This is a kahili — one of the 
trappings of my ancestors. Kind of glorified fly 
brush or sacred feather duster that they used to 
wave over our royal heads. Ceremonial emblem 
later — used in processions when you get married 
or bom or dead.” 

“ And this? Looks like a hat.” 

“ Warrior’s helmet — the mabiole — made of 
feathers too, you see, like this ahuulu — a chief- 


AURORA 25 

tain’s cloak. Great old birds for feathers, my 
progenitors! ” 

“ The makings of a masquerade,” said Howard. 
He thought Tom gave him a strange look, half hos¬ 
tile, but, his interest in the ancestral millinery 
waning as he caught sight of some spears and 
other weapons, he did not stop to analyze the 
impression. 

“ Fighters, your ancestors, eh? ” 

“ You bet! My great-great-grandfather con¬ 
quered this whole Island. — You can’t guess what 
these are, Howard? The aulina and aunaki — 
sticks that you rub together to kindle fire. That’s 
such a wonderful thing to me — how they ever 
found out how to do it. I half believe old Maui 
did learn the trick from the alae birds. Don’t 
laugh! It isn’t a bit funnier than the stories you 
haoles swallow about Jonah and Father Abra¬ 
ham! ” 

Philip could picture his aunt’s stupefaction over 
such a parallel. But he was more struck by the 
way the lad’s voice had rung with resentment. 
Howard suddenly realized that these were not 
curios to Tom but sacred relics of an intimately 
personal past. Tom might speak of them half 
derisively himself, as one who from the standpoint 
of a later generation condescendingly tolerates 
a father’s peculiarities; but it behooved the 
stranger to look at them with proper reverence. 
He linked his arm in that of the lad. 

“ How you must love these things,” he said in 
a new tone. “ As my Puritan grandfather loved 


26 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


the very stones of Plymouth shore. Can you make 
fire with the sticks yourself? ” 

“ Of course! ” said Tom, gruff still, but molli¬ 
fied. “ I’ll show you some time — out in the 
mountains where you can catch the spirit of the 
thing. — Oh, golly! The governor again! You’ve 
charmed him, Phil, darn you, with that classic 
mug of yours. Come on out. He and I always 
fight when I’m surrounded by the splendors of my 
historic past.” 

Howard left the house an hour later with a 
somewhat unfavorable impression of the elder 
Gregory. He could not understand his irascibil¬ 
ity. Why should such an issue be made of athletic 
prowess? Though of a sedentary habit himself 
he seemed determined that Tom should be ener¬ 
getic, and the boy’s indifference to the projected 
excursions eventually almost aroused a storm. 
Gregory also chided the lad sharply for not wish¬ 
ing to accompany his friend back to tov T n. 

“ Heat! ” he grovied. “ What’s heat to a 
youngster that’s born to it as you have been! ” 

It amused Howard to see how ably Tom at once 
assuaged his father’s w r rath and suited his own 
lazy inclination by substituting for the w r alk an 
appointment to swim with him after the heat of 
the day. 

As he descended the hill on his w T ay back to his 
aunt’s, Howard’s thoughts w r ere busy with this 
mother and son. His own more formal association 
with his mother brought sharp envy for the com¬ 
plete harmony evident between these tw T o. Curi- 


AURORA 


27 


ously enough the elder Gregory had seemed to 
wince at every expression of sympathy. He was 
chary enough of tenderness himself. Was he jeal¬ 
ous of the boy! Howard shrugged his doubt. 
Princess though Kameolani might be, even to less 
experienced eyes than his it would have been 
obvious what an inconsiderable place she held in 
her husband’s heart. 


CHAPTER III 


WHITE AND BROWN 

Howard and Tom Gregory were standing 
together on the wharf, enjoying the spectacle of 
steamer day. Already Philip had learned the 
importance, in Wahainalua’s blank calendar, of 
the day that brought the steamer Kinau from 
Honolulu with newspapers and mail. Though less 
freight now, and fewer passengers were landed by 
the Kinau on the wharf than in the days of the 
whalers, the town still turned out in its lei-gar- 
landed best to sing native songs and shout greet¬ 
ings to the Kanaka crew. Philip reflected that a 
stranger arriving at this moment would gain the 
same false impression of life and stir that had 
been his on landing from the Rosalie. Then, as 
now, the gay holokus of the older women, the trim 
summer dresses of the younger generation, the 
linen suits and flower-wreathed hats of the idlers 
among the men gave the dreary, shabby little 
town a deceptive air of prosperity and gayety. 

Standing somewhat apart from the shifting 
crowd, the two young men were savoring the gala 
evening in their different ways. Tom’s preoccu¬ 
pation for the moment was chiefly with the people, 
and in his delight at recognizing old familiar faces 
he chattered incessantly as a myna bird. 


AURORA 


29 


“ There’s his fat reverence, Father Rocham- 
beau. I got that French accent of mine from him. 
A good old boy, Howard. Wept to see me again, 
by George! I ’ll take you to visit him some day if 
you’ll keep it dark with the doctor and Aunt Abi¬ 
gail. How she did raise the devil with the gov¬ 
ernor when he let the padre get his claws into me! 
— See that old chap there with the yellow lei on 
his hat? That’s Alo — keeps a boarding house 
and coffee saloon on the Haina-Haina road. You 
should see his hula girls! I’ll take you there some 
time for a luau.” 

“ What’s that? ” asked Philip idly. 

“ A feast. I slipped in there last night for a 
taste of aiva — the native’s gin. A head on it — a 
little goes a long way. ’ ’ 

Philip frowned. “ None at all goes better, Tom. 
Leave the stuff alone — and hula girls too.” 

Tom drew himself up in quick offense. 

“ Suppose you and Aunt Abigail keep your 
preaching for the Kanakas. A chief has his own 
code — and keeps it, which is more than the haoles 
can say, some of ’em.” Then with the quick shift 
of mood that always surprised Howard, “ Don’t 
worry, old man. I’m nobody’s fool.” 

Philip was embarrassed, annoyed at himself. 
Senior though he was, he had no intention of 
playing mentor with Tom. 

“ How lovely the voices are,” he commented, 

as a chorus ended. 

Tom in his turn frowned. “ I hate it! Not the 
voices, they’re beautiful. Rut that music’s not 


30 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


Hawaiian. It’s the claptrap imitation stuff of that 
old Dutch bandmaster of King Kalakaua’s. His 
cheap transcriptions of the native music spread 
among the Kanakas faster than leprosy. What 
with his songs and the beastly little Portuguese 
ukeleles, the old music is just about lost. My 
mother’s taught me — say, look at the old man in 
white duck there, Phil. That’s Haddon, a mis¬ 
sionary who turned planter. No end of swag he’s 
got! His nephew was married to a Southern belle 
up there in Frisco the day we sailed. Pity your 
folks didn’t learn better how to feather their cleri¬ 
cal nest with the wool from the Christian lambs 
they brought into the fold! ” 

“ They aren’t that kind of Christian,” said 
Philip, still half absently. Charmed by the color 
and animation of the scene, he found his attention' 
wandering from Tom’s gossip. The Kinau had 
come to anchor late and the sunset behind her 
transformed the shabby little vessel into a galleon 
of gold. The native longshoremen under their 
burdens of freight bowed aureoled heads. A dis¬ 
tant island glowed like an amethyst in the opaline 
path of the sun. To Howard’s fancy the scene 
belonged less to the unfabled Pacific than to an 
ancient Mediterranean port. As he watched the 
procession of superb bronze bodies he thought of 
Greek slaves unloading a galley when the sun 
glanced low over the JEgean Sea; could fancy 
himself a sculptor standing there to gain from 
their lithe postures inspiration for the figures of 
his frieze. 


AURORA 


31 


Whether it was the long days of drowsy heat, 
the invigorating hours of surf bathing, or merely 
the stimulus of new scenes, already, within a week, 
the Island had begun to work a change in Howard. 
He was chiefly conscious of it in a renewed sense 
of physical strength. Languor of body was gone, 
and with it the dull brooding misery of his mind. 
He thought of Lucy no less, but though he did not 
realize it, there was a subtle difference in the 
nature of the thought. Her bodily presence was 
no longer with him. She had taken her inevitable 
place among the shadowy personalities of the 
dead. She was of the past, and in his renewed 
youth and vitality he could not, for the sake of the 
past, long withstand the call of the years that lay 
ahead. So unconsciously he had begun to build his 
life anew. He was tired of questioning, tired of 
rebellion, tired of thought itself. He was glad to 
let externals possess him, the better to exclude the 
brooding to which, he realized, his type of mind 
too naturally inclined. He reveled in the color of 
sea and sky, in the luxuriant vegetation, in the 
whole rich voluptuousness of Island life. 

In Tom he found a companion suited to his 
mood. The lad was a storehouse of native legend, 
a devotee of the romantic past. All the old tradi¬ 
tions of her noble family his mother had poured 
into his ears. Both Kameolani and her son had 
the raconteur's gift. Howard, either lying at her 
feet under the mango trees with Tom, or alone 
with the boy on the beach after a swim, was con¬ 
tent to listen lazily by the hour to the old tales 


32 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

of chiefs and kahunas and Island magic that they; 
loved to tell. 

Howard had virtually abandoned his aunt’s 
gray household for the more congenial atmosphere 
of the Gregory’s. He surmised that to the old 
couple his defection was only a relief. His aunt 
in particular seemed absorbingly busy, though 
with what occupations it puzzled him at first to 
guess. He concluded that diminution in the num¬ 
ber of her flock had not lessened the duties she 
found it imperative for a missionary’s wife to 
perform. She spent her life as royally in the sal¬ 
vation of a dozen souls as of a hundred. Her 
sister’s son was not without his moments of warm 
admiration for the patience of this staunch little 
crusader against paganism. 

For her sake, as the full significance of Tom’s 
last remark came to his mind, he resented the 
slur at the disinterestedness of missionary en¬ 
deavor. Arousing himself from his preoccupation 
he said rather sharply: 

“ It’s unfair to talk as if feathering their nests 
were a recognized part of the missionary game. 
Whatever the Haddons may have made out of it, 
Aunt Abbie’s not here for any gain of her own.” 

His pride in her Tom Gregory seconded with a 
grin. “ Oh, the old lady’s not half bad. It’s 
pretty decent of me to say so, too, for she has no 
earthly use for me, or for Mums either, for that 
matter. Thinks she’s an apostate, you know, for 
going over to the English Church. As for me, 
she used to think me an evil influence on the young 


AURORA 


33 


Hawaiian mind. Instinct, I call it; jolly clever of 
her to be so set against me, for she couldn’t even 
guess the mischief I was up to by half. Why, 
Phil, if she knew what I’d done toward keeping 
the old customs alive among the youngsters she’d 
not have a hair in her head that wasn’t white. ’ ’ 

“ What customs do you mean—hulas? ” How¬ 
ard looked at the lad with curiosity. 

“ Oh, hulas! ” Tom’s voice expressed his scorn. 
“ They’re alive without my help. There’s not a 
girl with a drop of Hawaiian blood in her that 
doesn’t catch on to the hula before she can swim. 
I mean — No! I’ll not tell you — not yet, if ever. 
You wouldn’t understand. You’ve got to have it in 
your blood and bones. But I’ll tell you this, Phil — 
you’re a stupid lot, you haoles ! Fancy sending me 
six thousand miles to stuff me full of your Long¬ 
fellows and Whittiers and Tennysons when all the 
poetry in the world is right here. Yes, here! In 
spite of your American Board having tried to 
choke it to death for more than fifty years.” 

The boy’s eyes were blazing, his face was trans¬ 
figured. Poetry! Howard’s pulses leaped at the 
swift vision of a nymph at play in the sunrise. 
“ Perhaps we’re not all as dull as you think,” he 

said. “Perhaps-” 

“Well, young gentlemen! Thick as thieves 
still, ashore, as well as afloat. What deviltry you 
up to here, young Gregory? Not that I care now 
I’ve got you safe off my ship.” 

“ How you startle a fellow, Captain Heath! ” 
Tom’s voice was petulant. “ You’ve got the step 



34 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


of a cat. How do you come to be out? They told 
me at the hotel that you were sick.” 

The big man laughed. “ Usual complaint of 
Jack ashore/ ’ he said cynically. “ Soon cured — 
for the time at least! ” His large white teeth 
gleamed out at them from under a heavy black 
mustache. 

Howard moved a step or two back, annoyed at 
the interruption and hardly troubling to disguise 
either his irritation or his deep-seated repugnance 
to the man. The Rosalie’s captain had been the 
one discord in the days at sea. He felt it a griev¬ 
ance that Heath, wdio since the commercial decline 
of Wahainalua had been cruising about the Orient, 
should have resumed his Island trade just at this 
time. Any necessity the Gregorys might feel to 
be decent to the flashy adventurer did not, he told 
himself, extend to him. With the termination of 
the voyage their relations had ended and he did 
not wish to see them renewed. 

The captain, however, whose bright blue eyes 
gleamed with amusement, willed it otherwise. The 
health of Doctor Adams was the subject of his 
affable concern. The doctor had sadly failed, in 
Heath’s opinion, judging by the brief glimpse he 
had caught of him on the arrival of the Rosalie. 
Mrs. Adams’s continuance of pious zeal he com¬ 
mented on with a scarcely-veiled sneer that made 
Philip grind his teeth. He had sufficient self-con¬ 
trol to remain silent, though, knowing himself no 
match for that evil tongue. 

“ You’re sailing to-morrow, I hear,” said Tom, 


AURORA 35 

outwardly more polite, though detesting the cap¬ 
tain no less. 

Heath smiled sardonically. The dislike of both 
young men had afforded him considerable amuse¬ 
ment on the voyage. 44 Yes, but you’re not rid of 
me so soon for all that. ” With his pocket knife he 
hacked off a quid of tobacco and stuck it into his 
cheek. 4 4 Down to Hilo for a day or two to get rid 
of my cargo and take on some more. Then back 
here for the sugar that old man Haddon hasn’t 
been smart enough to get out of his mill. No, you 
won’t see the last of me for another week or two.” 

Tom accepted the news with philosophical un¬ 
concern. 44 You’ll not bother us after next week one 
way or another. We’re off for the mountain,” 

said he. 4 4 My father-Well, by George! Liliha, 

as I’m a sinner! Just look at the girl! ” With a 
bound he crossed the jetty to a group of young 
Hawaiians. He seized Liliha excitedly by both 
hands. 

4 4 Liliha! ’ ’ said the captain, as if the name 
evoked fugitive associations. He chewed thought¬ 
fully at his tobacco, staring at the girl. 44 Who is 
she ? Not one of the hula bunch or I’m no judge of 
girl flesh. ’ ’ 

4 4 One of my aunt’s pupils, ’ ’ Howard explained 
brusquely. He was furious at Tom for bringing 
her to Heath’s notice. 

4 4 Liliha Knight! ’ ’ Captain Heath slapped his 
knee. 44 Used to play hookey from your aunt and 
swim out to the Rosalie along with Tom and the 
rest of the naked little rabble when she was a kid. 



36 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


Beat the boys at diving — bet she could yet! Jove, 
but she ’s grown up a beauty! Look at the figure 
of her, and the way she carries that head. The 
wharf rat playing at being dainty little Miss White 
Mouse. Can’t be done, Miss Mouse! You’ve tasted 
stolen cheese too often. — Hold your horses there, 
young Gregory! ” he called, as he elbowed his way 
through the crowd toward them. “ You’re not the 
only old friend on the beach.” 

Howard, frowning as he followed the captain, 
experienced a sudden sense of relief. For Liliha 
was far from repeating the cordiality of her greet¬ 
ing to Tom with this picturesque braggart of the 
seas. Her cool dignity completely nonplused the 
captain. He stood staring at her from under a 
scowl while she interchanged with Tom gay rem¬ 
iniscences of their escapades together before he 
had been sent away to school. Tom, laughing im¬ 
moderately, made one allusion in Hawaiian, but 
with the hint of a frown she answered him in Eng¬ 
lish. It struck Howard then for the first time that 
he had never heard her use the native tongue. 

Philip had an ironic touch of fellow feeling for 
the slighted captain. Liliha, as usual, hardly 
turned her eyes his way. Smiles and attention 
were all for Tom. But by some subtle undercur¬ 
rent Philip became aware that though genuinely 
indifferent to him, she had a deliberate purpose 
to accomplish with Captain Heath. He could feel 
the older man become gradually conscious of this, 
see the chagrin and anger in his eyes change to a 
crafty, all-observing stare. Heath laughed shortly 


AURORA 


37 


at last, as Liliha persisted in her disdain, gave her 
a mocking salutation and turned to jump aboard 
the Kinau . 

Liliha’s eyes followed his agile, well-knit figure. 
Her interest in Tom perceptibly sagged. She must 
get Doctor Adams’s newspaper from the post- 
office, she said, and return to the house. Of course 
Tom would come to see her at her own home. Hana 
and the children were already asking why he did 
not come. ‘ ‘ I knew why — that you had forgotten 
all about me! ” she said. Her lazy smile had a 
hint of coquetry. 

“ As if any one could forget you, Liliha! Aloha! 
Tell Hana I’ll surely come.” 

He linked his arm into Howard’s and drew him 
away toward the beach. “ She guessed it right, 
though,” he admitted with a laugh. “ She was 
mixed up in my mind with a dozen little brats I 
used to run away and play with on the sly.” 

“ Fancy forgetting her! ” 

1 ‘ Oh, of course she was nothing then but a wild 
little brown girl. ’ ’ 

“ I was sorry to see you recognize her,” said 
Howard abruptly. 

“ Sorry! Why? ” Tom drew back to look at 
his friend. 

“ I hated to see her brought to the attention of 
that brute.” 

Tom, slightly troubled, brooded over the sug¬ 
gestion. “ You needn’t worry over that,” he con¬ 
cluded, with easy indifference. “ Liliha’s not his 
sort. She’s straight, I tell you. And she jolly 


38 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


well knows how to look out for herself — as I dis¬ 
covered just now,” he added in an undertone. 

“ It doesn’t do her any good to be talked about 
before him, however,” said Howard, his anger ris¬ 
ing at Tom’s insensibility. After a pause he asked, 
“ Is it true that she used to swim out to the Rosalie 
with you boys t ’ ’ 

“ Oh! ” said Tom. A flush rose in his face. 
“ Why, she was only a kid — she hasn’t done that 
for years and years. And don’t you think any 
the worse of her either, Howard. Clothes don’t 
mean much to us Hawaiians — in spite of all your 
damned holokus! ” 

Howard shrugged impatiently. “ You and she’ll 
do well to remember that Heath’s not got quite 
your Arcadian views. Better keep her out of his 
way. ’ ’ 

“ Much I can do about it,” said Tom sulkily. 
“ I’ve always had to see her myself on the sly.” 

“ Your mother objects to her? ” 

“ Not Mums — it’s all the governor. He always 
raised the devil about my having anything to do 
with the native children here.” 

“ I suspect he was right about it.” Howard’s 
hand closed over the boy’s arm. “ You need a 
lot of civilizing yet, you young devil. ’ ’ 

Tom’s eyes danced. “ Much more than you 
guess! But civilization is so darned unpicturesque! 

I’ve half a mind to show you after all-See 

here, Phil, if you’ll promise to keep it dark, I’ll let 
you in on a game that not another haole on the 
Island knows.” 



AURORA 


39 


“ Rather not know it, thanks, if yon have to 
keep it as dark as all that.” Philip regretted 
the rebuke the moment he had uttered it. For the 
second time that evening he had allowed himself 
to play the warning elder. But Tom now only 
laughed. 

‘ i Oh, don’t be a prig, Phil! There ’s not a scrap 
of harm in it, I give you my word. It’s only a 
kind of tableau vivant of the old Hawaii. You 
know what a row that would make in this town! 
Now see here — we’ll leave the house together 
about nine o ’clock. Let me think. The moon sets 
near midnight. You meet me at eleven up by the 
big banyan tree on the Haina-Haina road. I’ll 
have to go down to the village and persuade Liliha 
to help me with the show.” 

In the white half-light of the young moon the 
steamer Kinau put off from shore. As Howard 
waited for Tom and Liliha on the hillside above 
the harbor he watched the black hull slip out into 
the misty obscurity of the open sea. In this ex¬ 
pectant humor it pleased him to fancy that with 
the sight of the ship all tradition of the whites was 
vanishing into the shadowy background of the 
night. There was nothing near to remind him of 
continental civilization. The dark barrier of the 
mountain wall shut him off from the rest of the 
world. The heavy scent of flowers in the still air, 
the tinkle of stringed instruments and the rhyth¬ 
mic swing of a song from the coffee saloon below 



40 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

seemed to his uncritical historic sense all to belong 
to the old, long-ago Hawaii. 

He had not long to wait. He soon discerned two 
figures on the white open stretch of the road. The 
boy, walking ahead, carried a bundle in his hand, 
The girl strolled along with bent head and a lag¬ 
ging step. When she perceived him in the shadow 
of the tree she uttered no greeting, and Tom was 
unwontedly silent as well. With a laconic iC This 
way,” he turned into a path that led up the hill. 

For more than half an hour they climbed in 
silence, up among densening verdure with the sil¬ 
ver sea widening at their feet. The moon sank 
lower. Lengthening shadows crept out of the 
folds of the hills. The path ended at an abandoned 
grass hut. Pushing on beyond it through a thick 
grove of kukui trees, they came at last to a rocky 
hollow, a bowl-like depression hidden deep among 
the trees. The waning moonlight showed at one 
side a small grass-thatched lean-to. In the center 
of the open space stood a flat rock strewn with the 
charred embers of old fires. 

Tom set down his bundle with a sigh of pleasure. 
“ My halaa! ” he said. “ The temple of joy and 
beauty that I set up to my ancestral gods as a boy. 
I haven’t seen it these three years.” 

“ A small crater, isn’t it?” asked Howard, look¬ 
ing up at the rocky rim. 

“ Why be so stupidly exact? Drop the scientific 
attitude, old man, and help me find some wood.” 

‘ ‘ I have no matches, ’ ’ said Philip, when the lit¬ 
tle pyre was built. 


AURORA 


41 


“ Matches! You’re profane! For the love of 
Laka sit there, Phil, and keep your prosaic mouth 
shut. Every time you open it you break the spell.’’ 

Tom waved his hand toward the farther side of 
the circle. Howard started to enter the thatched 
shelter hut Tom caught him rather roughly by the 
arm. 

“ That’s for Laka — only a chief or a kahuna 
can go near it. Sit here, Phil.” He led him to a 
fallen tree trunk. 

Liliha had disappeared in the shadows. When 
Tom, some minutes later, next broke the silence 
to ask, “Pan, Liliha? ” her low, “ Yes, I am 
ready, ’ ’ came back to them in her clear-cut English 
from the crater’s rim. 

In the stillness of the night Howard could hear 
his own pulses throbbing. Silence, utter silence 
until the last ray of moonlight had vanished from 
the mountain-top. Then a low rustle came to him 
from the unkindled fire, — a sound of wood rub¬ 
bing against wood. At the same instant Liliha’s 
full rich voice rang out in a wild chant over the 
sleeping world— 

“Na au makua max ka la hiki a ka la kau, 

Mai ka hoo kui a ka Jialawai . ...” 

The fire suddenly flamed. Before it knelt Tom, 
a pagan Tom, bare limbs revealed under a cloak of 
yellow and red mamo feathers, head crowned with 
a warrior’s feathered helmet. The chant was 
stilled. The boy rose, holding his arms aloft. He 
stood expectant. There fell a long silence. His 


42 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

pose became tense and strained. He looked angrily 
toward the crater’s rim. 

“ Liliha! ” he called sharply. “ Liliha! ” 

She advanced slowly into the light of the leap¬ 
ing flames. Tom flung down the fire sticks with a 
snarl of rage. “ Your dress! 99 he cried. “ You’ve 
spoiled everything! Why didn’t you put on your 
native dress? ” 

The girl faced him sullenly. Howard thought 
that in the firelight her eyes flashed positive 
hatred upon the youth. 

“ It isn’t here,” she said. 

“ But you told me- 99 

“ I lied to you — yes. I didn’t mean to wear it. 
I’ll never wear it again.” 

i ‘ Liliha! Remember you ’re talking to your 
chief. How dare you disobey me? ” 

Liliha’s laughter rippled out. “ My chief! Will 
you punish me, Chief ? Strangle me — stone me ? 
Oh, Tom, Tom! Haven’t you learned at your 
school to be ashamed of such play? ” 

“ Play! It’s not play! ” The bitter anger in 
Tom’s voice startled Howard. “ I am the chief — 
the king! I owe it to Hawaii never, never to let 
the old customs die! ” 

Liliha shrugged. Her face lost its defiance in 
sadness. “ I have no love for your old customs. I 
want them to die. For you, perhaps, it’s no harm. 
You, nearly all white, rich, respectable — you can 
forget sometimes that you are white. I’m only 
half-white. I live with Kanakas. I’m poor. If I 
forget that white half I am Kanaka always.” Her 



AURORA 


43 


voice deepened with passionate feeling. Her eyes, 
that Howard had once thought soulless, held in 
them all the misery of the dark races of the world. 
“ I will not forget it, I say! I will not — I will 
not! I HI make myself white. ’Fll not marry a 
man unless he’s more white than I. Why do you 
think I came to-night? To make my own vow to 
Pele — to tell her in this halau firelight that I will 
not be brown but white, white, white! ” 

Tom burst into cruel laughter. “ To Pele! ” he 
mocked. “ Why not vow that to your white God, 
Liliha? You see, you can’t help yourself. You 
can’t even think white.” 

She stared at him, stricken with a dismay that 
was almost terror. Both hands were pressed 
against her breast. Her breath came sobbingly. 

“ You’re all wrong, Liliha,” he continued, earn¬ 
estly now. 1 ‘ It’s not the white that’s you, Liliha 
— not what I admire in you, nor what any man 
who’d care to marry you would love. You musn’t 
be ashamed of your brown blood. The brown peo¬ 
ple are the most beautiful in the world.” 

Liliha threw up her head. ‘ 4 Lies — lies! The 
brown blood is all shame. I know. A real white 
man despises the brown. But men shall love the 
white in me! I ’ll never, never play at your fool¬ 
ishness again! ” 

She ran from them. They could hear her swift 
retreat through the darkness. Then upon the 
crackle of bushes and thud of steps silence fell. 
Tom slowly took the mahiole from his head, threw 
the feathered ahuulu from him to the ground. Clad 


44 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


only in a malo he stood, holding out his hands to 
the blaze. 

“ There’s your education! ” he said with 
shrug. “ Too bad, too bad! Darn it, Phil — I’ 
have done better to have brought one of Alo’s 
girls! ” 


& p 


CHAPTER IV 


LILIHA CHARTS HER SEA 

Three days later Howard lay full length on the 
headland, watching the schooner Rosalie weigh 
anchor and put out to sea. He was deeply thank¬ 
ful to see her go, for he had grown to feel that her 
captain’s continued presence in the town boded 
Liliha no good. His own keen interest in the girl 
had been considerably whetted by his realization 
that Liliha felt so bitterly the stigma of her deriva¬ 
tion from an inferior race. Her passionate out¬ 
break in the firelight had shown him that she was 
far from being the simple child of the sun that he 
had first imagined her to be; that the outer pro¬ 
priety imparted by the missionaries cloaked not 
only a care-free, childlike pagan, but also a turbu¬ 
lent, emotional woman, hot with ambitions and de¬ 
sires and despairs that he would not have dreamed 
of attributing to his cool Diana of the dawn. 

Which of these Lilihas was in the ascendancy? 
Which would rule her in her conflict with Captain 
Heath? From the first Hpward had known that 
she had a strong though furtive interest in this 
man, easily the most picturesque personality — no 
doubt to her eyes the most romantic — that had 
ever come her way. Though the few interviews he 
had witnessed since their meeting on the wharf 


46 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


had been marked by the same Puritanic demeanor 
on the girPs part, he dreaded the final outcome of 
the silent drama that was being enacted between 
them. For Heath was wooing her, patiently, mock¬ 
ingly, persistently, and for one brief moment, the 
preceding evening, Philip had seen Heath’s blue 
eyes flash suddenly like an electric spark and 
Liliha’s flare out a signal in response. 

Happily the captain had now taken his sardonic 
self off, — for a week at least. Howard wondered 
whether some means could not be devised to keep 
Liliha out of his way on his return. It was useless, 
he knew, to appeal to his aunt; she would never be 
brought to believe that any danger could exist for 
Liliha in such as Captain Heath. Perhaps Kameo- 
lani, who liked the girl, but he knew enough of 
Kameolani to realize that while he might readily 
enlist her interest, he was not likely to arouse her 
to any action on the case. Perhaps Gregory him¬ 
self — 

He was startled from his brooding ,by a low 
laugh. Liliha sank down on the grass beside him. 

‘ 4 You too watch the ship, ’ 9 she said. In Liliha’s 
soft speech the word became almost “ sheep.” 
“ Before many weeks, perhaps, you too sail away 
again — back to that big land of yours, America. ’ ’ 

Howard was inwardly amused to find himself 
flattered by Liliha *s approach. He felt, he told 
himself, like a courtier sustaining the honor of his 
first royal audience. Heretofore, indeed, Liliha 
had honored him with so scant a consideration 
that his vanity had been piqued. Feminine indif- 



AURORA 


47 


ference, on the whole, was a novel experience. 
Though he possessed nothing of the captain’s 
rather brutal dash and vigor, nor of the poetic 
quality that drew glances to the scapegrace, Tom, 
something in Howard, the sympathetic insight of 
his gray eyes, perhaps, had hitherto always drawn 
women to him, even without conscious effort on his 
part. And since the dawn of his new interest in 
Liliha he had put forth considerable effort to gain 
her confidence, until now quite without result. 

Clasping hands behind his head, he smiled up at 
her. “ I don’t think I shall sail away very soon, 
Liliha. I like this land of yours too well.” 

She brooded over his words. ‘ 4 I know no other. 
I never yet have left the Island. But I shall go.” 
Her voice lowered with intensity as she repeated, 
“ I shall go.” 

44 There’s no place half so beautiful,” he said 
rather absently. He was watching the picture she 
made, — her hair, blown into loose tendrils by 
the wind, framing her face under a big straw hat; 
her head uptilted, her delicate hands clasped about 
pink calico knees. 

Liliha shrugged. 44 Beautiful, perhaps! But 
I’m not thinking of beauty. ’ ’ 

“ Why should you, indeed! ” Philip agreed, still 
looking up at her in half laughing admiration. 
“ You have beauty with you wherever you go.” 

“ Yes, I am beautiful.” There was something 
oddly winning in the frank admission, quite with¬ 
out vanity. “ That is why I am sure to go away. 
I shall marry some one who will take me.” 


48 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

“ I see,” said Howard, conscious of an inex¬ 
plicable sense of check. 44 Have you perhaps made 
your choice? ” He watched for any sign of con¬ 
fusion, but she showed none. 

“ Not yet, but very soon. It must be soon! In 
three months I shall be eighteen. There’s no harm 
for a man not to be married then, but for a woman 
it’s much more than time.” 

4 4 Where will you-’ ’ Howard broke off with 

a laugh. 44 How do you know you ’ll be able to find 
a husband so soon, Liliha? Isn’t the field a bit 
limited? There aren’t many young men here, I 
mean,” he added, as she looked at him with the na¬ 
tive’s empty eyes. 

44 Not many that I would marry! ” answered 
Liliha with a lift of her head. 44 Kanakas, yes! 
But you heard me say it — I want only a man more 
white than I. But until a week ago what did I 
find? No one! Not one! ” Her head again ex¬ 
pressed her disdain. 

44 And you think the field has widened now? ” 
He leaned on one elbow the more comfortably to 
watch her. 

She looked back at him gravely. 44 There is Cap¬ 
tain Heath,” she agreed, 44 and there is Tom.” 

Howard was aghast to find himself smiling deep 
into Liliha’s eyes. He would have given much to 
recall the involuntary message, but it was too late. 
Liliha’s gaze, widening, suddenly burned into his. 
The blood rose in Philip’s face. His eyes were 
lowered first. Liliha continued to look at him, 
musingly now, with a new speculative interest. 



AURORA 


49 


“ My mother married Kameho when my father 
was dead two months,’’ she remarked. “ It is not 
thought respectable among the haoles — to marry 
so soon after death! ” 

“ No,” he assented in a rather strangled tone. 

“ Not perhaps for a year! ” 

“ Not for more than a year,” he said firmly. 

“ Ah! ” said Liliha. She renounced him with 
a slight sigh. 

Philip’s surge of shame resolved into silent 
mirth. So that was the secret of Liliha’s imper¬ 
viousness! He was too recently a widower. He 
would not be eligible until she had passed beyond 
the limit of honorable spinsterhood. Let self-es¬ 
teem rest content! Liliha merely would not waste 
time upon an unprofitable speculation. 

“ You know America well — I think you know 
more even than Tom,” said Liliha after a short 
silence. “ Tell me, is the captain of a ship much 
respected there! ” 

Howard’s sympathy suddenly went out to her. 

i 

He had a vision of a little craft setting out, cen¬ 
turies ago, from a far Polynesian island on the 
long voyage that brought Liliha’s ancestors to this 
shore. Another such lonely adventurer was Liliha 
herself, drifting out on another such uncharted 
stormy sea. But for her shipwreck would seem 
more sure. 

“ Liliha,” he said earnestly, “ don’t count on 
Captain Heath. He doesn’t mean to marry you.” 

“ I know that,” she answered. “ I asked him to 
myself. ’ ’ 


50 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


“ You asked Captain Heath to marry you? ” 

She nodded her head. ‘ ‘ Last night. ’’ 

Philip leaned back again on his elbow. u What 
did he say? ” 

“ 1 Marry you! Me! Gosh! ’ ” 

Howard broke into a laugh. Her mimicry con¬ 
jured up the image of the captain in owl-eyed 
stupefaction. 

“ Exit the captain / 9 he said with satisfaction. 
“ That lets him out of the game.” 

Liliha slowly shook her head. * 1 I like him much, 
much the best! 99 There was a look in her eyes as 
she watched the now distant ship that brought all 
of Philip’s uneasiness flooding back. 

“ You’d not think of him without marriage, 
surely! ” he said with some sternness. 

Liliha mused. “ I shall be respectable. It’s bet¬ 
ter so. But there’s something you perhaps can 
tell me. Last year, while Mr. Gregory was in 
Honolulu, I went to Mrs. Gregory’s to sew. For 
four weeks I lived there and read many, many 
books. They were not like the books at school. 
They didn’t talk of heaven but of great cities of 
Europe and real people — rich people! And balls, 
and princes, and jewels — oh, they were wonderful 
to read! But I couldn’t always understand. Tell 
me — in those big cities a woman who is married 
has also a lover and still is respectable? That’s 
what I thought the books said.” 

Howard smiled. “ It’s been known to happen,” 
he said idly, more intent on the modeling of 
Liliha’s neck and ear than on her words. “ The 


AURORA 51 

respectable part depends a bit on whether she’s 
found out.” 

Liliha nodded to herself, her eyes still on the 
distant ship. “ So I could marry Tom and still 
keep Captain Heath,” she reflected aloud. 

The sudden application of the general to the 
particular startled Philip into attention. “ Good 
Lord, Liliha! Don’t you know you can’t. Hasn’t 
my aunt ever talked to you about these things? ” 

“ So often! ” sighed Liliha. She looked at him 
with a little frown. “ But does she really know? ” 

“ Know what? ” 

“ What rich, great people can do? Tom says she 
has middle-class virtues. I mean to be top class, 
like Tom.” 

“ Good Lord! ” said Howard again. ‘ 1 And I 
thought you as simple as a babe! ” He considered 
her silently. Such another moment of poignant 
pity as he had experienced in the Jialau firelight 
cast its shadow on him now, — pity, and a pierc¬ 
ing regret for the fugitive image of his innocent 
dream-bather of the dawn. What happiness could 
her scheming, passionate woman’s heart bring to 
her to compare with her vestal delight in the 
caresses of wind and sea ? Remembering her first 
question and her literal acceptance of his careless 
reply, his seriousness deepened. 

“ No, Liliha,” he aid gently. “You read the 
books wrong. The haoles write stupidly some¬ 
times— tell you things that you aren’t expected 
to believe. It can’t be done in real life — not if 


52 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


you want to be truly respectable. You’ll have to 
stick to the one man.” 

“ It must be Tom, then,” she said, with a hint 
of regret. 

“ Tom’s not in love with you.” 

She pondered the question — accepted his view. 
“ Not now. But I can make him love me — the 
brown me, not the white.” 

Philip started. She struck straight at the heart 
of Tom’s vulnerability. She had her Achilles by 
the heel. 

“ But you wouldn’t like that,” he countered. 
“ You mean to be always white.” 

‘ ‘ For a little while I should not mind. When he 
has married me, than I can be white. I will be! 
He shall not call me nigger as my father did my 
mother.” 

Deep pity for her again stirred Howard. She 
was too beautiful to be stamped forever with the 
brand of inferiority, to be regarded always as a 
type upon which the white man believes it his 
privilege to prey. There was little to mark her as 
belonging to the brown race. Away from these 
Hawaiian surroundings what might she not make 
of herself? He thought of his own unused and 
meaningless wealth. 

“ Liliha,” he said abruptly. “ Drop this idea 
that you must get married now and let me send you 
to the States to school for a year. A school where 
they’ll teach you the things top-class people ought 
to know. The money means nothing to me. An d 


AURORA 53 

it might give you opportunities you don’t dream 
of now.” 

She looked at him with a kindling face. “ You 
would marry me then ? ’’ she said. 

Philip was furiously conscious of a wild leap 
of his heart. With that extraordinary beauty, 
when the fires in those eyes were really lighted, 
to what madness could they not lure a man. All 
his self-control was needed to answer her steadily. 

“ I sha’n’t marry again, Liliha. Put that idea 
out of your mind. What Pm offering you is a 
chance to improve your condition without mar¬ 
riage. Just say the word and the Kinau will start 
you on your way next Friday. Will you go? ” 

The glow died in her face. She looked steadily 
out to sea. “ It is good of you. But you don’t 
understand. It’s not best — no, for me it’s not 
best.” 

“ But why — why, Liliha? ” he urged. 

She looked at him and smiled, — a smile that 
excluded him. She turned away her head and he 
had the feeling that upon the confidence that she 
had so freely opened up to him she had suddenly 
closed a door. He knew that he had failed her, but 
in what manner, by what omission, he could not 
surmise. 

She rose and waved her hand rather mockingly 
out to sea. “ It is good-by then, Captain! ” 

“You can’t marry Tom, you know,” he said 
upon an impulse that he at once regretted. “ Not 
for three years.” 


54 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

With a little frown she turned her head. “ What 
do you mean — three years? ” 

“ There’s not a minister or a priest on the 
Island who’d marry you two minor children with¬ 
out Mr. Gregory’s consent.” 

Startled, Liliha looked intently at him. Then 
she laughed. “ Not your kind, perhaps. But a 
kahuna would.” 

‘ ‘ A kahuna marriage wouldn’t be legal — 
wouldn’t count.” 

She laughed again, looking obliquely at him over 
her shoulder as she turned to go. “ It would count 
with Tom — and with the Princess Kameolani. 
That’s all I need! ” she said. 

As he watched her withdrawal — her pink 
lioloku brushing the guava bushes, her hand break¬ 
ing a spray of blue convolvulus bloom to wave back 
at him in gay salute from the turn of the trail 
— Philip had the disagreeable conviction that she 
had scored. 


CHAPTER V 


OLD GREGORY SPEAKS 

Howard’s sense of elder-brother responsibility 
toward Tom sent him that very afternoon to talk 
to Mr. Gregory. Tom, he was happy to find, had 
driven to Haina-Haina with Kameolani and the 
elder Gregory was alone. A slight barrier still 
existed between Gregory and Philip. Gregory 
often absented himself from the family circle and, 
though cordial always to Philip, had made no spec¬ 
ial effort to seek his company. Philip consequently 
had anticipated some embarrassment in the inter¬ 
view. But at his first hesitating mention of Tom 
as the subject of some disquietude, Gregory’s 
manner thawed. He took Philip’s arm in a firm 
kindly clasp. 

‘ 4 Don’t worry over the lad too much, ’ ’ he said. 
‘ i He wouldn’t be Tom if he weren’t either falling 
into or out of a scrape. Come to my library where 
we’ll be undisturbed. These pad-footed Chinamen 
know most of what’s going on in this house, but 
I’d rather keep Tom’s affairs to ourselves.” 

He led the way to a great cool room paneled and 
floored with beautiful Island woods. As Gregory 
moved about in quest of matches and cigarettes 
Howard drifted past the well-filled bookshelves. 
With a smile he noted the grave assemblage of 


56 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

names that lined the walls, — Shakespeare, Mil- 
ton, Darwin well to the fore. History in abun¬ 
dance; theology and philosophy side by side. It 
was not from this literary fount that Liliha had 
drawn her spicy draughts of the mores of top-class 
society. Philip could picture the paper-covered 
fare on which Kameolani would more probably re¬ 
gale herself — the Seaside Library, the Duchess, 
Ouida — a few translations from the French, prob¬ 
ably, hidden in furtive corners well out of the 
range of Mrs. Adams’s visiting eye. For even 
among the apostates Abigail had never resigned 
her prerogatives as dictator of the feminine pro¬ 
prieties. 

The broad window in whose embrasure he and 
Gregory now seated themselves faced the sea. The 
low afternoon sun was out of their vision. Through 
the open casement Philip could see a line of white 
breakers close inshore and a limitless expanse of 
smooth lee water blending into the sky. 

Gregory, after offering Philip the cigarettes, 
placed them on the table beside him. “ Now go 
ahead, ’ ’ he said, lighting a pipe for himself. “ Tell 
me what’s plaguing you about the boy . 9 9 

While Philip repeated the parts of his morn¬ 
ing’s conversation with Liliha that most affected 
Tom, Gregory listened without interruption, look¬ 
ing out at the shadowless monotone of blue. So 
motionless he sat that Philip glanced at him more 
than once to make sure that he was paying heed. 
The young man avoided all mention of the night 
scene in the forest and stressed his belief in Tom’s 


AURORA 57 

4 

boyish indifference to the siren in Liliha. 44 Under 
the circumstances, ’ ’ he concluded, 44 uneasiness 
may seem fantastic. But I thought the possibili¬ 
ties too grave to keep you in ignorance.” 

44 Fantastic! ” Gregory reached for a match 
to rekindle his forgotten pipe. In the spurt of 
flame his yellow face looked white. His hand 
trembled. 44 I tell you, young man, there never 
was grimmer reality. The little jade means every 
word of it. What’s more, she’s capable of putting 
it through/’ 

“ I’m absolutely sure, sir, that Tom doesn’t care 
a hang.” 

44 Bah! What difference does that make? ” 
Gregory impatiently emptied the bowl of his pipe 
out the window and reseated himself to fill it 
again. » 

Philip’s mind glanced suddenly back down a 
long vista of years to a young Kameolani, able, 
like that girl on the headland, with one glance to 
trouble the peace of men. 

44 This is what I’ve been afraid of,” Gregory 
went on when the pipe was drawing again. 44 This 
is the reason I hesitated to bring him home. These 
cursed Island women can be the ruin of a lad like 
Tom. And this witch has more than the primitive 
lure; she has the wilier brain of the white that 
knows how to make cleverest use of the animal 
charm of the brown. Damn the girl! ” he cried, 
throwing his pipe on the table suddenly. 44 I’d 
like to have her, and every Jezebel like her, 
jailed!” 


58 


A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


A hot flush of resentment rose in Howard’s face. 
“ In your anxiety for Tom, Mr. Gregory, you’re 
brutally unjust to the girl. Liliha’s got some sav¬ 
age in her, I admit, but fundamentally she’s decent 
and wants to be respectable. After all, she’s only 
trying to do for herself what many mothers w T ould 
do for her — set herself up in life with the most 
eligible partner the town affords. ’ ’ He broke into 
a chuckle. “ Her methods may be a bit irregular, 
but the ambition’s sound! And, by Jove, she’s 
lovely enough to deserve a chance! ” 

Gregory scowled at him from under his bushy 
brows. Then he sighed. “ I forget you’re almost 
as young as Tom. You’ve lived more than most 
young men in the six years that lie between you, 
but not quite enough to understand. I wonder, 
when you so generously offered to send her to 
school, did the thought perhaps occur to you that 
some day you might wish to make her your own 
wife? ” 

Philip’s flush deepened but he answered without 
hesitation, “ I’ll not say some such idea didn’t 
flash across my mind — the feeling, that is, that 
she might grow to be a woman of whom any man 
would be proud. But it couldn’t happen with me, 
sir. I couldn’t marry again.” 

Gregory once more sighed. “ So I said — 
twenty years ago! ’ ’ His eyes rested moodily on 
Howard. For the moment he seemed to have for¬ 
gotten Tom. “ What was your father thinking of 
to send you here! You should have gone to some 
cold northern place where there’s clean manly 


AURORA 


59 


work to be done. This is a cursed place for the 
young. Did you know that I came here for your 
very own reason? ” he shot at him suddenly after 
a pause. 

Howard looked at him, startled. “ No.” 

“ Well, that’s the fact. I came to forget a 
woman I had lost. I was about your own age. The 
life got me — and the women. I was what they 
called a God-fearing youth, so I married — mar¬ 
ried a beautiful, good woman, as you know. But a 
woman who isn’t my race. Nor my kind. Nor I 
hers, God forgive me, nor I hers! ” 

He rose to pace the room, his shoulders hunched 
with the effort to clasp his hands behind his broad 
back. The youth in Philip blurred his real sym¬ 
pathy with an amused appreciation of the gro¬ 
tesque effect produced by that figure in the throes 
of tragedy. 

“ If you youngsters could only understand the 
hell these mixed marriages are! ” Gregory stopped 
his uneasy march and leaned his arms heavily 
on the back of his chair. 4 4 Passion dies — and 
then there’s nothing but long years to be dragged 
through somehow. Long years of life together 
without one intellectual interest in common — one 
common taste-’ ’ 

“ That happens sometimes at home,” Philip 
interrupted him dryly. He lighted a cigarette and 
rising, stood by the window, looking out at the 
warming color of the soft sky. All the Island lure 
shone for him in the deepening sunset. He liked 
these gentle Island people; liked Kameolani es- 



60 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


pecially. These reflections on her husband’s part 
offended him. 

A flash of the older man’s eyes showed that he 
felt and resented Howard’s criticism. “ If one’s 
personal happiness alone were at stake, naturally 
I shouldn’t be saying this to you. But there’s 
something much graver to think of. The children. 
The hell you open up to them. At the price of 
much bitterness to myself — perhaps at the too 
heavy price of loss of his confidence — I’ve made 
it my business to see that Tom doesn’t feel any 
sense of inferiority in his blood. But it’s there 
— my God, it’s there! . . . You know Tom — 
bless him! Know that he’s lovable, affectionate, 
brilliant almost, a youngster full of charm. But 
you’re less keen than I take you to be if you 
haven’t seen that he’s weak, lazy, unreliable — 
lacks any real conception of honor and truth. 
These are bitter things for a father to say — bit¬ 
ter facts to face. Tom’s not to blame. Iam. I’ve 
been a traitor to my race — to him. I should have 
seen to it that my son had an inheritance of 
strength, not of frailty.” 

Philip, shocked, almost revolted, still gazed out 
the window, weighing in his mind the cruel words. 
He knew that the lad was weak, had a strain of 
deceptive secretiveness that had always outraged 
his own love of truth. But was that due to his 
Hawaiian inheritance? Wasn’t the father to blame 
in a less dramatic, much more common way, — in 
mere failure to understand and gain the confidence 


AURORA 


61 


of his son? He did not voice the questions that 
surged through his mind but merely said: 

“ Isn’t that something out of the power of any 
of us, sir? Something that doesn’t depend at all 
on race? Even with the fairest ancestry a man 
can foretell nothing of the quality of his sons.” 

Gregory jerked his head impatiently. “ Of 
course not! But if we, the white race, consciously 
toiling up from savagery throughout long cen¬ 
turies, can’t always maintain the level we’ve once 
reached, what can we expect of the races that have 
no such tradition of effort behind them? We forge 
a weak link in our civilization every time we cross 
the strain. No, there’s no escaping it; my son, 
who should have risen to a plane above me, has 
stepped down.” 

Philip’s eyes were still on the horizon, on the 
sea glowing now with gold. Though affected by 
Gregory’s earnestness, his mind refused to accept 
the premise upon which the older man’s argument 
was based. Was the son really inferior to the 
father? Loyalty to his own generation answered 
no. What did Gregory’s middle-aged virtues and 
accomplishments amount to when weighed in the 
scale against Tom’s promise? Gregory had con¬ 
tributed little to the land of his adoption. The 
wealth that gave him his position on the Island 
was Kameolani’s; he was but the steward of her 
estate. A fat, lethargic burgher, bewailing his 
early mistakes! What had he to show against the 
divinity of youth in Tom? A lower plane, — was 
not Gregory merely biased by that strange paren- 


62 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


tal jealousy that distrusts the half of the son’s 
inheritance that is not derived from the same 
source as his own? 

“ It’s hard for me to agree with you, sir,” he 
said at last, half diffidently. “I’m new to the life 
here, of course. New to the people. But they 
charm me. They fascinate me. They’re so sim¬ 
ple and kindly and generous — like delightful chil¬ 
dren who never grow old. It makes a fellow won¬ 
der whether civilization isn’t an overrated thing. 
Whether they haven’t stressed the better part of 
life — we chosen the worst.” 

Gregory grunted. “Umph! That’s a phil¬ 
osophical phase we all pass through here. Mind 
you, I don’t say it isn’t true. I hold no brief for 
civilization. But we ’re not talking of the intrinsic 
worth of this race or that so much as of the mix¬ 
ture of the two. You are a product of that civiliza¬ 
tion and you can’t change yourself. And your 
highly developed mentality can’t mate with the 
primitive and not bitterly rue the day.” 

Unexpectedly Howard laughed. “ Don’t under¬ 
rate Liliha’s mentality, Mr. Gregory! At seven¬ 
teen she’s absorbed everything Aunt Abbie has 
acquired in a civilized lifetime, besides having 
evolved an original life philosophy for herself.” 

“ If you could really sound that philosophy of 
hers, my boy, you’d understand me without fur¬ 
ther words.” Gregory’s voice sounded suddenly 
to Philip tired and old. “ I’ve never denied her 
cleverness. She has that extraordinary facility 
for picking up externals that is one of the curiosi- 



AURORA 


63 


ties of the Hawaiian mind. But it means mighty 
little. Many a woman with every appearance of 
cultivation and social experience is essentially a 
savage still. You don’t know what the savage in 
Liliha may lead to. I do. Remember she’s com¬ 
mon clay — hasn’t even the tradition of such re¬ 
straint as the alii grew up under in their elaborate 
system of tabus. I tell you, boy,” he cried, his 
voice rising with emotion, “ no man really knows 
the gulf that separates the primitive mind from 
his own until it is too late. That is one thing that 
Tom must never know. He hasn’t the strength of 
character that can stand up under too great a dis¬ 
illusionment. Tom’s only got one real prop in 
life, one thing that he believes in with all his soul 
— his mother. Let him fall into Liliha’s hands, or 
another’s like her, and all that he has worshiped 
and loved in his mother he will learn to despise in 
his heart.” 

In the long silence that fell between them the 
last glow faded from the sea. Howard’s thoughts 
were still in confusion. The man’s insight could 
not fail to impress him; his own instinct had 
sensed danger for Tom. Else why should he have 
hastened to lay the case before Gregory? But 
had that instinct been true ? Where did truth lie ? 
In the man’s gross belief in Liliha’s baseness, or 
in his own sense of a wild, untamed, but essentially 
beautiful nature reaching out of her pagan dawn 
toward a more enlightened day? 

Gregory sighed and stirred. As he sat in the 
shadowy room, his head huddled down upon his 


64 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


shoulders, his great bulk loomed like some fabled 
monster of the tropical jungle. 

‘‘ There’s no question about it,” he said, “ I 
must get Tom away. To the mountain with you 
Thursday, as we planned. Then to the other 
islands — you with him still, I hope, if you will 
consent to go. His vacation will soon pass and 
he ’ll be back at school again. Never to return here, 
if I can help it, before he’s made his choice of a 
wife — some sweet, strong, white girl! I tell you, 
Tom must marry more mind and character than 
he’s got of his own. He must! Otherwise our 
family’s course is run.” 

The echo of another voice resounded in Philip’s 
mind, — a voice in the firelight ringing out de¬ 
fiance to her world. ‘ ‘ I will be white! I ’ll marry 
only a man more white than I! ” Strange that 
civilization and barbarism should utter so nearly 
the same cry! 


CHAPTER VI 


SUPERSTITION ’s WING 

On the morning set for the departure on the 
mountain trip Philip was sitting on his aunt’s 
lanai studying a sketch map. The map, indeed, 
had not engrossed his whole attention since Liliha, 
clothes brush in hand, had stepped into the open air 
to groom Peter Adams’s Sunday coat. To protect 
her dark crown of hair from the dust she was tur- 
baned like a Turk in a red kerchief, and the young 
man’s eyes paid involuntary tribute to the effect. 
The sleeves of Liliha’s holoku were rolled high on 
her brown arms; the prim collar band was unbut¬ 
toned at the throat. Philip’s eye for line resented 
anew the ungainly garment that Puritanism had 
imposed as the native woman’s dress. Its ugli¬ 
ness, nevertheless, enhanced for him Liliha’s na¬ 
tural distinction. If she could look queenly in a 
calico holoku, what startling beauty would be hers 
were she given the opportunity for adornment 
that Lucy’s wardrobe had offered. 

Liliha turned and caught Philip’s half wistful 
gaze. She smiled at him with the brightness that 
in the ten days of their acquaintanceship he had 
grown to believe reserved for himself alone. It 
marked, he thought, her own special sympathy for 


66 


A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


his bereavement. He wondered whether un¬ 
guessed depths of womanly tenderness might not 
lie hidden beneath the cool glaze of her ambition. 

“ Not a very fine day for your start/’ she ob¬ 
served, looking up at the cloud-hung mountains. 
‘ ‘ But the wind blows ma-uka — inland, I mean — 
and perhaps the clouds will pass by noon.” 

Liliha’s conventionality of speech under his 
aunt’s roof never failed to sharpen Philip’s per¬ 
ception of the girl’s dual personality. It amused 
him in this instance to find himself replying in the 
same strain. In the midst of his trite rejoinder he 
became aware that Liliha was smiling a greeting 
to some one behind him. He turned. Sing, the 
Gregory’s houseboy, was coming up the lanai 
steps. Dressed in a flowing jacket of dark blue 
and wearing a little red-buttoned black cap, from 
under which his queue hung down, he had a 
younger, more jaunty look than the white-starched 
servant to whom Philip had grown accustomed. 
He waved a letter at Howard, saying: 

“ Lettah foh you. Kameolani sick. No go,” 
he volunteered, in anticipation of the letter’s news. 

“ Very sick? ” Philip hastily tore open the 
envelope. 

“ Thinkums velly sick. Mebbe die.” 

Philip’s eyes glanced down the page. “ What 
makes you say that? ” he asked rather sternly. 
“ Mr. Gregory says it isn’t at all serious.” 

Sing’s hands went out in a deprecating gesture. 
“ Not what he think — what she think. She heah 
alae bi’d cly. ’ ’ 


AURORA 


67 


“ Alae bird? ” Philip turned inquiring glance 
at Liliha. The girl shrugged impatiently. A 
frown darkened her eyes. 

“ Stupid nonsense! ” she said. “ I don’t be¬ 
lieve it means a thing .’ 7 

“ But what does Kameolani think it means? ” 
Philip asked. Liliha, her lips drawn tight in 
obstinate silence, vigorously brushed the coat. 
ii What does she think it means, Sing? ” 

The stolidity of Sing’s face did not change. Ex¬ 
pression was limited to his mobile hands. More 
delicately than had Liliha, he conveyed a similar 
contempt for a superstition he did not share. 

“ When he cly oveh house, some one die. She 
say so. I no know. I no know? ” he repeated. 
“ Goo’ by.” Dropping his arms to his side he 
turned to go. 

“ Tell Mr. Gregory I’ll come up at once,” Philip 
called after him. He stood frowning down at the 
letter. Sing’s words had given him a strange 
shock. Was it possible that Kameolani, devoted 
member of the Church of England, accomplished 
graduate of the Honolulu Female Academy, still 
was affected by the old superstitions of her race? 
He had never dreamed that the old tales she re¬ 
peated, told in something of Tom’s tone of mock¬ 
ing affection for the Hawaiian past, could ever 
have any influence on her personal life. He could 
hardly believe it now. 

“ Liliha,” he said, “ what’s this business about 
the alae birds? ” 

“ Sing told you,” she answered morosely. She 


68 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


looked past him, up at the veiled mountains, her 
own face as clouded and darkened as theirs. He 
continued to look at her questioningly and at last 
she said, dragging the words out with reluctance: 

“ When the alae birds cry over a house, Ha- 
waiians say some one who lives there is sure to die. 
If they cry ma-uka it means danger to one on the 
mountain; or ma-kai, to one at sea. My mother be¬ 
lieves this. Many Hawaiians do. But Kameolani 
is a Christian — a white, like me. Such signs mean 
nothing to us. Through them no harms comes to 
Christians.’’ 

Her words were emphatic, but there was little 
conviction in her tone. She stood with the coat 
forgotten in her idle hands, staring at the dark 
mountains. Philip, after a long searching look, 
averted his own glance from her troubled face. He 
started to speak to her and checked himself. 
Frowning, he thrust the letter into his pocket and 
entered the house. 

4 ‘ Aunt Abbie! ’ ’ he called. 

“Pm here — in your room, Philip,” she re¬ 
plied. 

He went to her and explained briefly that a 
slight illness of Kameolani’s would postpone their 
trip. 

“I’m going up to see if there’s anything I can 
do,” he said. “ Perhaps they need some one to 
ride to Haina-Kua for Doctor Patterson. I may 
not be home until late.” 

His aunt looked distressed. She stood looking 
at him, hesitating before speaking, a circumstance 


AURORA 


69 


rare with her. “ Send for me if yon think I am 
needed, Philip,'’ she said at last. “ It's dretful to 
think of her without spiritual support — dretful! 
But she's made her choice and I can't interfere — 
not with Mr. Crabbe in town! Not unless she asks 
for me. You be sure to let them know, Philip, that 
Peter and I stand ready to come at a word." 

Howard put his arm around his aunt's lean 
shoulders. “ You're a brick, Aunt Abbie! Don’t 
worry about Mrs. Gregory. I don't think there's 
much the matter with her. She’s awfully reck¬ 
less with her eating, you know, and the Kinau 
brought her a huge box of goodies the other day. 
That may have a good deal to do with it. Don’t 
bother about my traps here. I’ll put them away 
when I get home." 

With a sigh of regret for the lost excursion 
Philip left the house, passing Liliha on the lanai 
with only a nod. She looked sullen, he thought, 
out of sorts. Peter Adams's coat lay neglected on 
the lanai railing. With a quick little frown he put 
her out of his thoughts, turning his mind to the 
trouble at the Gregorys. As he passed the Angli¬ 
can church he wondered whether Kameolani had 
ever confided to her rector her fear of the alae 
birds. He could imagine the consternation in cleri¬ 
cal circles if the damning fact became known. His 
aunt, he knew, would feel more than ever justified 
in her contempt for a church within whose ranks 
such heathenism could exist. But were her own 
ranks as swept clear of pagan heresy as she be¬ 
lieved? Liliha acknowledged her mother’s sub- 


70 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


jection to the old superstitions. How about Liliha 
herself? Was it contempt that underlay her irri¬ 
tation, or was it fear? 

At this point Philip’s meditations were broken 
in upon by a fierce rush of wind. The cocoanut 
palms rattled sharply, eerily, above him; he felt 
on his cheek the lash of rain. His linen suit was 
no protection from the quick fury of a tropical 
storm; he would be drenched to the bone. Look¬ 
ing around him for shelter, he took hasty refuge in 
the doorway of a deserted hovel that stood beside 
the road. An unsavory place, littered, dirty, smell¬ 
ing of fish and rancid oil, — a home of squalor and 
poverty like so many in this lotus land. Philip 
felt suddenly tired and oppressed, loathed this 
place that had charmed him only an hour before.. 
He gazed out through the heavy veil of rain. Be¬ 
low him, near the beach beyond the fish market, lay 
the shanties of Wahainalua’s Chinatown. Was 
young Sing even now spreading the news of 
Kameolani’s illness there? Did Chinatown buzz 
with gossip of the liaole households, or did the pas¬ 
sive Oriental exterior indicate a corresponding 
passivity of interests? How could any man, mis¬ 
sionary or no, flatter himself that he knew what 
was going on in these alien minds? 

For the first time Philip grasped the full extent 
of Mr. Gregory’s isolation, lording it there in 
lonely grandeur in his great white house on the 
hill. The two clergymen and the priests were the 
only white men left in Wahainalua who were 
either intellectually or socially Mr. Gregory’s 


AURORA 


71 

equals, and with the religious type of mind he 
manifestly had little sympathy. The few white 
planters on the Island lived at a distance that 
made intercourse difficult and rare. Even Had- 
don, the nearest, lived fifteen miles away. Philip 
thought with a new sympathy of the lonely man, 
living among aliens, the silent communion of books 
his only zeal contact with the white race. Strange¬ 
ly enough it was the Chinaman’s laconic “Not 
what he think — what she think ’’ that really 
brought home to him the gulf that Gregory’s own 
words had told him existed between husband and 
wife. 

The storm swept up the mountain in a gray 
cloud interwoven with rainbows. The sun shone 
out. Only the new fragrance of the earth, the new 
brightness of the hibiscus flowers and the deeper 
blue of the sky bore witness to the tempest that 
had just passed. 

Philip started on again. On reaching the Greg¬ 
ory place it surprised him to find the household, 
outwardly at least, in its usual quiet, orderly ease. 
Kameolani had been taken sick in the night. A 
Hawaiian stable boy had at once driven to Haina- 
Kua bringing the doctor to the house before dawn. 
Mr. Gregory’s extreme irritability perhaps de¬ 
noted a secret anxiety, but he expressed no more 
worry than his letter had led Philip to expect. 
Tom, on the other hand, he found utterly unnerved. 
At Gregory’s suggestion he took the lad out for a 
stroll within sight and hearing of the house, for 


72 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

Kameolani was still under the influence of an 
opiate. 

Philip was amazed to discover that Tom shared 
to the full Kameolani's terror of the alae bird. As 
soon as they were out of the house he began to 
pour the story of the night into Philip's ears. Pain 
had awakened Kameolani, but she had had such 
attacks before, and knowing what to do for them, 
had not aroused any one. But as she lay there the 
bird had called overhead. Shrieking with terror 
then, she had brought the whole household to her 
bedside. The governor had been more angry than 
alarmed, Tom went on to say with bitter resent¬ 
ment, had turned every one but Tom out of the 
room and had sent Kaon off posthaste for the doc¬ 
tor. His sternness had changed Kameolani's hys¬ 
terical screams to a low whimpering that only the 
doctor's opiate at length had stilled. In spite of 
Doctor Patterson’s assurance that rest and a pre¬ 
scribed diet would speedily bring about a cure, 
Tom's terror had not been allayed. He felt that 
a banshee doom hovered over the house. 

“ You’ll see," he said stonily. “ Such signs 
never fail." 

Had Kameolani been stricken with a less gross 
complaint, Philip in his impressionable state of 
mind might have caught a thrill of Tom's alarm. 
But overeating does not readily lend itself to a 
poetic connotation and Philip found his sympathy 
unexpectedly veering around toward the elder 
Gregory. Before his servants and his son, his 


AURORA 73 

wife’s barbaric outburst of terror must have 
shamed the sensitive proud man to the soul. 

However, considering Tom’s very real anxiety 
and distress, Howard could do no less than take 
a serious tone with him. He called to his aid a 
story affecting the family of one of his own 
friends, — a series of incidents that had combined 
in a seemingly tragic import. The prosaic out¬ 
come brought a smile even to Tom’s rigid face. 

“ No one else heard that cry last night,” Philip 
concluded. “ And the fancies of a person in great 
pain can’t always be taken too seriously. In any 
case, if you show distress you’ll only do her harm. 
Even if death has called to her, which I don’t for 
a moment believe, there’s no sense in helping to 
make her last days pass in an agony of fear. Don’t 
let her see it if you are afraid. You’re not the 
first who’s been called on to smile in the face of 
death.” 

Until he saw Gregory’s look of relief on their 
return, Philip had not realized how far his own 
calm influence had prevailed with Tom. 

“ Your mother’s stirring,” Gregory said, in a 
tone gentler than Howard had ever heard him use. 
“ You can do more than any one else to keep terror 
away from her. Go up to her, boy. Doctor Pat¬ 
terson’s there. I’ll not come till after she’s fully 
awake. ’ ’ 

Tom left them without a word and after a mo¬ 
ment’s hesitation Philip held out his hand in good- 
by. He saw that Gregory had no desire to talk. 
He himself, ashamed of his earlier hostility to 


74 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


this man, would have liked to express his new¬ 
found sympathy; but common sense told him that 
sympathy from him now could only be a galling 
impertinence. 

Lonely days followed for Howard. Kameolani, 
though recovering, continued in bed. Her husband 
and son were in constant attendance. Gregory, 
Howard felt, shunned society more than ever, but 
he seemed anxious that Tom should have compan¬ 
ionship. Beyond the daily swim, though, and an 
absence from the house of an hour or two at most, 
Tom could not be persuaded to leave his mother. 

From him Howard learned that Kameolani’s 
agony of fright had subsided when she awoke free 
from pain. As far as Howard could see, neither 
Tom nor his mother had any sensitiveness about 
their capitulation to superstitious fear. Philip was 
irritatingly aware that a man who numbered 
among his own ancestors one guilty of Salem 
witchcraft dooms had little right to feel contempt 
for any surrender to false gods. Nevertheless he 
felt unaccountably repelled and not altogether 
sorry to have his intimacy with Tom suspended 
for a while. His whole conception of Hawaiian 
life and character was in flux. He felt that he 
had allowed Tom and Kameolani to cloud his ob¬ 
servation with the rather turgid current of their 
own romance, and that only by a quiet analysis of 
first-hand impressions could he ever hope to get 
the image cleared. 

So, thrown on his own resources for many hours 
of the day, he occupied himself in extending his 


AURORA 


75 


acquaintance in Wahainalua. With his prowess in 
swimming to recommend him, he made friends 
with the younger Hawaiian men, going with them 
in their outrigger canoes on fishing trips along the 
coast. He dropped in at the coffee saloons; and 
saw his fill of the hula girls. He sat among the 
gossip mongers at the store and on the quay. And 
with each day’s experience, as he grew to under¬ 
stand the easy unmorality of these happy people 
of the sun, he lost something of his intolerant 
scorn for the missionaries’ uncompromising stand 
against paganism. For, once the mist of Tenny- 
sonian romance began to lift above reality, he saw 
the grossness, the animal quality in them, before 
which the fastidious side of his nature recoiled. 

But these new acquaintances of his were the 
humblest of people, — fisher folk, descendants of a 
vassal class that less than half a century before 
had still borne the feudal yoke. Dominated body 
and soul as they had been by the all-demanding 
alii, small wonder that in their lives and lusts they 
still seemed a part of the animal rather than the 
human world. But surely such as Kameolani had 
no kinship with these! Nor Liliha. Was not 
Liliha’s cool project to make a good marriage, her 
determination to sacrifice the choice of her heart 
to her ambition, the best proof that the voluptuous 
wanton had no part in her? 

During these days he saw Liliha frequently. The 
distasteful impression made on him by her sub¬ 
conscious terror of the alae birds faded the next 
time he saw her, smiling, poised, lovely as a dream. 


76 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

For though while apart from her he could analyze 
her coolly and dispassionately, in her presence the 
glamour of her beauty banished criticism. Her 
manner with him was uniformly friendly and kind. 
But though he talked with her often now and with 
the familiarity of longer acquaintanceship, it was 
always through the door she had closed upon him 
the day the Rosalie sailed away. Her eyes had a 
sleepy opacity when she looked at him, though 
once or twice a gleam of mischief in them had 
given him a baffled feeling that secretly she was 
amusing herself at his expense. Did she know that 
he had warned Tom’s father against her? She 
gave no sign. Had she seen the lad in secret since 
her passionate flight from him in the woods? He 
did not see where she could have found the oppor¬ 
tunity, constantly on the alert as he had been to 
detect and prevent their meeting, even had not 
Kameolani’s illness kept Tom from all thought of 
Liliha. 

Partly to keep further watch on the girl, partly 
because of the interest that all unconsciously to 
himself his mind attached‘to every aspect of her 
life, he made friends with Liliha’s mother, Hana, 
and her Hawaiian husband and brood. Hana, in 
spite of having lived many years with a white man, 
in spite of her more recent contact with the mis¬ 
sion, w T as wholly Hawaiian, in habit and feeling 
and mind. In appearance she was a typical na¬ 
tive woman of middle age, handsome in a fat and 
laughing way, full-nostriled, large-eyed, rejoic¬ 
ing in a heavy crown of straight black hair. She 


AURORA 


77 


had been a hula dancer in her unregenerate youth 
and still loved to be gayly dressed, with bright rib¬ 
bons and blossoms in her hair. Her Sunday clothes 
were surpassed by none of the younger women in 
the town. With her husband and six children 
she made an impressive showing of godliness in 
the little wooden church. Her talk on the Sabbath 
was an amusing reflection of Abigail’s discourse 
on salvation and sin, and one hearing her then 
might imagine her constantly preaching redemp¬ 
tion to an unlistening Hawaiian world. But her 
week-day habit of speech was not always so 
edifying. 

Liliha’s home was a native hut of grass, roofed 
with Pandanus leaves and divided by a curtain of 
kapa cloth into two rooms. The house stood apart 
from the village on a flat piece of delta land where 
one of the short mountain streams came down to 
the sea. It was shaded by ohia trees and cocoanut 
palms and surrounded by muddy taro patches 
among which Kameho and his eldest son often 
worked, their brown bodies bare to the sun. Taro 
growing and fishing furnished the whole family 
with a livelihood. 

The girl’s presence in this idyl of Island life 
never ceased to seem as foreign to Howard as his 
own. Even seeing her working there, in her shape¬ 
less lioloku and bare feet, he could not imagine her 
as belonging to that home. That she did not really 
belong there, that to all intent and purposes she 
was an alien and a stranger, chance one day re¬ 
vealed to him. 


78 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


On this occasion he was lounging, as he often 
did, in Hana’s doorway, watching Liliha as she 
knelt under an ohia tree a few yards distant, her 
strong bare arms kneading the steamed taro into 
poi. Red ohia blossoms clustered above her — it 
was these flowers, he knew now, that had gar¬ 
landed her head when he had first caught sight of 
her in the dawn. The netted, slender leaf shadows 
delicately patterned the washed-out pink of her 
holoku. The dusky splendor of her hair framed 
a laughing face. Broken phrases of song trilled 
from her in the breathing spaces of her work. 
Hana, weaving a basket of pandanus leaves, 
squatted beside him at the door. 

Upon this peaceful scene came Kameho, up from 
the taro field with a visitor, — Fat Leong, the 
Adams’s cook. The old Chinaman, with a duck 
of the head toward Philip, rolled out a greeting in 
the Hawaiian tongue. 

“ Good morning, Fat Leong! ” called Liliha in 
English. “ Does Mrs. Adams want me to-day? ” 

At the words a look of fury crossed Hana’s smil¬ 
ing face. “ Haole! ” she spat out at Liliha. There 
followed a tirade of unintelligible abuse. The 
girl’s face blanched, then burning color swept over 
it. With bent head she drooped over the knead¬ 
ing trough, the song dead on her lips. 

Oblivious to the Hawaiian chatter beside him, 
his cigarette smoldering in forgetful fingers, 
Philip sat there in silence, his shocked eyes on the 
girl. Hana disliked Liliha, hated her at times! 
By a hundred tokens in retrospect he knew this 


AURORA 


79 


to be the truth. So that was what life meant to 
the half-caste, — the scorn of both races that had 
given her birth! 

Not until years after did another aspect of this 
incident occur to Philip’s mind. He wondered 
then what heartless cruelty in the father had 
caused the mother to see in their child only the 
perpetual, hateful reminder of something she 
wished above all else to forget. 


CHAPTER VII 


LILIHA SETS SAIL 

The Rosalie was again in port. All day Philip 

• 

had wrestled with an uneasy sense of impending 
crisis. It was useless to tell himself that Liliha 
had renounced Captain Heath, that ambition was 
her strongest defense against his pursuit; useless 
to argue his own indifference to her fate. He was 
not indifferent. Something in her spontaneous 
transport of joy that first morning, breaking like 
the rose glow of dawn itself across the dun misery 
of his mind, had ushered in a new era for him, — 
an era that gave life power again over death. And 
even though in dispassionate moments he might 
see her now divested of enchantment, a creature 
more earthy than he was himself, his spirit still 
acknowledged the debt it owed to her. 

She brought to mind a certain aspect of the New 
England woods, that exquisite moment of the 
still unawakened spring when the bare boughs, 
not yet budded, show nevertheless in color and a 
smoother roundness that new life is coursing with¬ 
in. It was that transitional moment he had sur¬ 
prised in Liliha, — spring exultant, not yet surg¬ 
ing with the impulse of fuller life. Why this 
should have brought him healing he did not know. 




AURORA 


81 


Perhaps because while passion means maturity, 
decay, she symbolized the immortality of imperish¬ 
able youth. 

The bitterest part of his sorrow had been that 
he could not, like many of his generation who read 
the new science without accepting its implications, 
believe death to be merely an interruption in an 
eternity of happiness. Lucy’s death had meant 
finality. The consolations evoked by theology 
brought him only rebellious despair. But through 
that vision of winged youth in Liliha he had dimly 
gained a new concept of eternity. He and Lucy 
were themselves eternal because, though their own 
thread of happiness might be broken, it had helped 
to weave the vast web of the continuity of life on 
earth. 

Philip did not, at this period of his manhood, 
consciously formulate this as a creed; it was little 
more than the adumbration of a later philosophy. 
He was living emotionally still, swayed by forces 
quite other than reason. Passion was dormant in 
him; but that Liliha might have had power to 
arouse passion in him had she chosen so to exert 
herself he did not at this time in the least suspect. 
Blind as he believed his aunt and uncle to be in 
regard to Liliha, he was unaware that he too shut 
his eyes to one facet of her personality and that 
the one which most concerned himself. He be¬ 
lieved implicitly in her power to influence Tom, 
little dreaming that she could have exercised a like 
power over himself. He was sincere in the con¬ 
viction that loyalty, reason, and his own firm will 


82 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


kept under control the undeniable surge of attrac¬ 
tion he felt toward her. How could he guess that 
the ship of his passion, placidly riding out the tide 
now, could have been driven on the rocks by one 
idle turn of Liliha’s masterly hand? 

It was true that the revelation of her ambition, 
the calculating side of her mind, and the glimpse 
he had caught of the superstitious native in her 
had to a certain extent cooled his interest. Cooled, 
but not quenched. He still believed her worthy of 
better things than her intriguing mind had 
imagined for itself. If she could be kept from 
Captain Heath’s influence during the few hours 
of his present stay; if she could be frustrated in 
her designs on Tom, he might then renew his offer 
to send her away to school with better success. 

All day from his aunt’s lanai he watched the 
lading of the schooner Rosalie, half ridiculing him¬ 
self for the uneasiness that weighed upon him 
again and again. With a long ship’s telescope he 
could recognize the captain’s active figure, now on 
deck, now on shore, directing the longshoremen in 
carrying aboard the sacks of sugar — the moun¬ 
tain of sacks — that lay ready, or gesticulating 
among groups of townspeople on the quay. He 
watched Heath at times with a smile, enjoying his 
own finesse. For by arousing his aunt to a grieved 
realization of certain shortcomings in his outfit 
for the newly arranged mountain trip, he had kept 
Liliha employed at the sewing table for the day. 

Secure in the belief that he had the sulky, hos¬ 
tile girl cornered under the eye of a chaperon, he 


AURORA 


83 


went down to the beach in the afternoon for his 
usual swim with Tom. He found the lad in the 
gayest of spirits. Kameolani had foregone all her 
invalid’s prerogatives and had that day resumed 
her normal routine about the house. 

“ We’ll be off for the mountains in two days at 
most,” Tom said. “ I’ve come around to your 
way of thinking, Phil. It ’ll be no end of a lark. ’ ’ 

On his return Howard’s complacency received 
a check, for Liliha had gone. She had complained 
of a headache, his aunt said, and had looked as if 
she might be feverish as well. Abigail had pre¬ 
scribed for her and had sent her home to bed. 
Dread closed in upon Philip again. He begged 
for an early supper, hinting a desire to visit the 
Gregorys, but inwardly resolved to find the girl 
and dog her footsteps until he felt sure that the 
captain was back on his ship. The Rosalie, he had 
learned, was to sail at dawn. 

As he left the straggling town behind him on the 
way to Hana’s hut a full moon was rising above 
the mountains. Rose glow and moonlight united 
in a pearly radiance on the sea. A fragrance of 
jasmine and plumeria blossoms hung in the still 
air. In the wet fields, shining like silver, heart- 
shaped taro leaves floated, a glistening fairy fleet. 
The Island enchantment had never before cast for 
him a deeper spell. His recent disillusionment fell 
from him. He was back in his fairyland of the 
tropic seas where romance was truth and beauty 
reality. 

A light shone in Hana’s doorway and the lazy 



84 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

twang of a ukelele came from within. “ Aloha, 
Hana! ” Howard called and stepped to the door. 
The kapa curtain was thrown back, revealing at a 
glance the whole interior, lighted dimly by a kukui 
oil lamp. Liliha was not there. But Hana had two 
callers, — Sing and Captain Heath. 

The presence of the Chinaman was unusual at 
that hour, though Sing was a frequent visitor. 
Chinese and Hawaiians were on the friendliest 
terms in Wahainalua. Several intermarriages 
had taken place and Sing himself was talked of 
in the village as a possible husband for Kameho’s 
niece. 

Philip nodded to the Chinaman and saluted 
Heath with ironical cordiality. He felt that fate 
had played into his hands. It would be much 
simpler to attach himself to the captain than to 
seek further that will-o ’-the-wisp, Liliha. He won¬ 
dered with a joyous lift of his spirit whether it 
was to avoid Heath that she had absented herself 
from home. 

Captain Heath did not share Philip’s satisfac¬ 
tion in the encounter. His greeting was surly and 
he grunted when Philip with easy familiarity seat¬ 
ed himself on the grass mat. 

“ Thought you were a cut above this sort of 
thing! ’ 1 said he. 4 ‘ But still waters run deep. A 
little low life on the quiet, eh, when Aunty thinks 
us enjoying high life at the Gregory’s? ” 

It was perhaps the modicum of truth in this that 
made the comment sting. For a moment Philip de¬ 
bated the pleasing project of having done with 


AURORA 


85 


surveillance and settling scores with the captain in 
the primitive way. But Heath’s size and weight, 
combined with his known practice of flinging recal¬ 
citrant sailormen about his deck, rendered the out¬ 
come unhappily sure. To resort to fisticuffs would 
only leave the captain master of the field. Howard 
summoned a grin. 

“ As you see,” he agreed. “ Not the first time 
I’ve visited you, either, is it, Hana? ” 

“ No-a,” replied Hana with her easy smile. 
“ Good frien’. We give you song? ” 

“ Fire ahead.” Philip rolled himself a cigar¬ 
ette. The captain, with another scowl at him, took 
out Ills pipe and lighted it. Throughout Hana’s 
droning song, accompanied by Kameho on the 
ukelele, the captain continued to glower at Philip. 
That young man, greatly amused, fixed his eyes on 
the Chinaman crouching against the wall with 
hands locked around his doubled-up knees. The 
strong pungent odor of burning kukui oil, reminis¬ 
cent of roasting peanuts, sharpened Philip’s sense 
of the almost theatric quality of the scene. It was, 
he reflected with glee, a comedy where the comic 
element was all in the minds of the entertained. 

“ Very pretty! ” was the captain’s sarcastic 
comment at the close of the song. “ Not very 
lively, though, for your sort of little game, How¬ 
ard. I recommend Alo’s hula girls. — Mr. Gregory 
home, Sing? ” 

“ Ye-ah! ” Sing bobbed his black-capped head. 

“ Guess I’ll get along then and see if he has any 


86 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

commissions for ’Frisco this trip. Aloha, Hana. 
See yon again in a few months.” 

“ I’ll go with you,” said Philip affably, rising 
to his feet. “ I want a few words with Tom.” 

“ Walking’s free,” said the captain, with a men¬ 
acing look. 44 But I’ll trouble you to keep off my 
side of the road! ” 

Mischief sang in Philip as he silently trudged 
along a dozen paces behind the captain in the 
moonlight. The more savage Heath grew the 
more assurance Philip felt that this sea-faring 
Lothario’s evening was going wrong. A word to 
Tom, he knew, would enlist the boy’s aid as well. 
Together they ought to be able to harry the cap¬ 
tain back to his ship well before midnight. 

The whole affair was assuming to Philip the 
aspect of a college lark. It did not occur to him, 
as he strode along in the furious man’s wake, that 
he might taunt the latent beast in the captain into 
a burst of murderous rage. He had never thought 
to measure the strength of the passion that was 
urging Heath in his pursuit of Lililia. To Philip 
a man in the middle forties was almost ludicrously 
past the age when love could influence him. Not 
the least suspicion crossed his mind that anything 
was impelling the captain but the idlest vanity and 
caprice. 

They were near the Gregory’s gate before either 
spoke. Then Heath stopped suddenly. 

“ Hark! ” said he. “ A woman’s scream! ” 

Through the angular branches of the Norfolk 
Island pines they could see the lights of the house. 


AURORA 


87 


As they stood listening, another wailing cry came 
out to them. At the same moment Gregory’s voice 
called from the lanai, 44 Tom! That you, Tom? ” 

44 It’s Philip Howard, Mr. Gregory.” Philip 
went forward into the light. 44 I’m looking for 
Tom. Thought he was here.” 

4 4 He ought to be — the scoundrel! ’ ’ said 
Gregory fiercely. 44 He must be found — at once.” 

The cry rose again. 

44 His mother is — sick? ” 

Gregory threw out his hands. 44 She’s in a state 
of frantic fear over Tom. That cursed alae bird 
— she thought she heard the cry, ma-uka. Went 
to see if Tom had heard, expecting to find him in 
bed. His room’s empty. That was enough. She 
thinks him in deadly peril somewhere on the moun¬ 
tain. God knows, if I can’t find him, there’s dan¬ 
ger enough for her. She’ll go mad if this goes 
on! ” 

The mountain! Philip had the instant convic¬ 
tion that he knew where Tom had gone. 4 4 May I 
look in his room a moment, Mr. Gregory? That 
might give a clew-” Not waiting for permis¬ 

sion, he ran up the stairs. As he had surmised, 
the feathered emblems of royalty were gone. 

He hurried back to the lanai. 44 It may be an 
hour, Mr. Gregory, but I think I can bring him 
back.” 

Gregory caught him by the arm. 44 Where do 
you think he’s gone ? ’ ’ 

“ To the mountains with Liliha. Can’t stop to 



88 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

tell yon how I know. Quiet his mother 111 
surely bring him back. ’ ’ 

From the moment Gregory had accosted him 
Philip had completely forgotten the captain. Now, 
as he reached the gate, he was relieved to find him 
gone. That Liliha had a rendezvous with Tom at 
the halau Philip had not the slightest doubt. Let 
Heath search the town over for her now. She was 
safe from him at least. If only he felt as secure 
about the boy! 

He had no difficulty in finding the mountain 
path. The moon sailed high now, lighting it 
almost as if by day. Philip sped upward, buoyed 
by the hope that the others had not long preceded 
him. The second time that he paused to catch his 
breath he thought he heard a step on the turn of 
the trail below. He called, but got no answer. 
Could any one be following him, and why? He 
pushed on until he reached a shadowed part of the 
trail. Walking hurriedly to the bend, he rounded 
it, and then, close to the wall, crept silently back 
upon his tracks. He crouched down in the shelter 
of a bowlder and waited, listening. But he heard 
nothing and after a short interval hurried on 
again. 

At the grass hut he hesitated, losing the way for 
the moment in the dense shadow of the hukui 
trees. As he searched, suddenly he heard, like a 
heart beat of the night, the rhythmic tap of a na¬ 
tive drum. Then a faint chant came to him. He 
lifted his head at attention. Jubilant, wild, thrill- 


AURORA 89 

ingly familiar; it was Liliha’s own chant of the 
dawn. 

He started forward, but checked himself. Out 
of the shadows beside him stepped Captain Heath. 
He was laughing*. 

“ Not so bad for a sailor! Almost as good a 
tracker as an Indian in spite of my weight! ” he 
boasted. 

“ Captain Heath,’’ said Philip, “ I beg you not 
to follow me further. The business I’m on is not 
my own.” 

“ But it may happen to be mine. Turn about’s 
fair play. If you can follow a man against his will 
so can I.” He started toward the drum. Philip 
touched his arm. 

“ Keep your hands otf! ” snarled the captain. 
1 ‘ All hell won’t stop me now. Don’t be a fool, boy. 
I go armed.” He put his hand threateningly to 
his belt. 

Philip shrugged and let his arm drop to his side. 
After a tense moment of listening the two men 
crept forward together. 

The drum beats throbbed louder; the chant fell 
wilder upon their ears. All at once the clearing 
broke before them, the leaping flames from the 
altar fire reddening the moonlight. 

Beside the thatched shelter reclined Tom in all 
his feathered majesty. On either side of him 
squatted the bronze body of a drummer, chanting, 
the one swaying to the slow rhythm of the deep¬ 
sounding paho drum, the other bending to the wild, 
hypnotic cadence of the ipu gourd as he raised 


90 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


himself to beat it with his hand or bent forward to 
strike it on the ground. 

And under the proscenium of the moonlit sky 
danced a hula girl, grass-skirted, body draped with 
flower garlands and strings of beads, flowing hair 
crowned with a wreath of heavy-scented plumeria, 
— Liliha, pride of the mission school! 

Philip stopped short. The barbaric beauty of 
the scene took his breath. In another moment he 
was seized by a revulsion of disgust as he saw Tom 
lift a gourd of awa to his lips. He strode into the 
circle and caught the boy by the arm. 

“ What damned foolery is this! ” he said 
roughly. “ Come home at once if you don’t want 
your mother to die of terror on your account.” 

“ Mother! ” Tom swayed to his feet. “ She’s 
perfectly well-” 

“ She thinks the alae bird is crying ma-uka — 
knows you ’re on the mountain-’ ’ 

“ God! ” cried Tom. He pressed his hands to 
his dazed eyes. ‘ 4 Liliha — my clothes! Wiki¬ 
wiki! Help me find my things.’ 

Liliha did not answer. At Philip’s first word 
the chant had died to silence. Liliha stood motion¬ 
less, her arms folded lightly across her bare 
breasts. Her dark eyes, lit with wild heathen fires, 
gazed straight at Captain Heath. A moment she 
stood there. Then a smile crossed her face. With 
a proud lift of the head she stepped backward out 
of the firelight into the obscurity of the trees. 

“ Liliha ! ” Philip cried after her. He turned 
savagely to Captain Heath. But he too was gone, 




AURORA 91 

vanished like a stealthy feline prowler into the 
night. 

Philip stood stupidly in the firelight. The half- 
besotted royal chieftain fumblingly buttoned him¬ 
self back into civilization once more and stumbled 
off down the trail. The musicians too had stolen 
away. All that remained of the heathen spectacle 
was a little heap of feathered garments huddled 
together on the ground. Poor, wild, beautiful 
Liliha! Philip, with a spasm of pain, recalled that 
other Liliha who had broken from this same firelit 
circle in glorious revolt against the brown man’s 
fate. Now ambition, riches, respectability, Chris¬ 
tianity itself had gone for nothing. For the flame 
of primitive passion that she by her carnal dance 
had striven to kindle in Tom had leaped out to con¬ 
sume herself. 

The girl Liliha was not seen in Waliainalua 
again. When the day broke the Rosalie stood far 
out to sea. 





PART TWO 


MERIDIAN (1900) 


/ 



CHAPTER VIII 


NEW YEAR’S EVE 

Philip Howard was bored, both bored and un¬ 
reasonably disappointed as well. In spite of his 
forty-four years he had come to Mare Vista this 
holiday season with a vague anticipation of find¬ 
ing the new year that rounded out the century in 
some way different from all the other years’ turn¬ 
ings that doubled past him ever more swiftly now. 
On the contrary everything promised to be dis- 
couragingly the same. The seaside hotel was as 
resplendently comfortless as he had rated it three 
years ago. The golf links were as perfect, the 
golfers as tedious in their vapid gossip of one an¬ 
other’s form. The California winter sun shone 
capriciously as always, veiling itself in clammy 
fog streamers to discourage attempts at sports, 
and gleaming out brightly when, sport having been 
definitely decided against, one found oneself tied 
for the afternoon to a complaining woman whose 
marital grievances one already knew by heart! 

Howard, waiting in the hotel lobby for his 
cousin, Minnie Gregory, to join him for a walk, 
wondered with a shrug whether he were getting 
old, whether that was why life seemed at times so 
flat, so monotonous, so tame. He strolled past the 


96 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

great mirror that hung near the stairs and gave 
his image a furtive scrutiny. No sign of age in 
the lean, rather ascetic face, in the humorous eyes, 
in the slender erect shoulders! Grizzled hair, of 
course, crow’s-feet lightly traced, neverthe¬ 
less - Howard turned away, half ashamed of 

the impulse, half gratified by the reassurance the 
mirror gave. 

Drifting back across the lobby he stopped at the 
desk and idly scanned the names registered for 
the day. 

44 Max Kingsley! ” he said, looking up at the 
clerk. 4 4 The writer ? I thought he w T as still in the 
Philippines. ’ ’ 

44 No — that’s him, Mr. Howard. Didn’t you 
see it in the paper? He come all the way down 
from ’Frisco in Mrs. Haddon’s automobile! ” The 
clerk was not without his pride that such a dis¬ 
tinguished means of locomotion could be men¬ 
tioned as appertaining to the Mare Vista’s guests. 

The tone amused Philip. He leaned again over 
the register. 44 Mrs. Walter Haddon,” he read, 
44 Miss Alice and Miss Ada Haddon. Who are 
these enterprising travelers? San Franciscans, I 
see.” 

44 In a way, sir — they rent a suite at the Occi¬ 
dental by the year. Island people, you know. 
Touch of the tar brush, we’d say at home. 
Wouldn’t have ’em in our first-class hotels. But 
lots of people don’t mind that here.” 

44 I didn’t know Californians were so cosmo¬ 
politan.” 



MERIDIAN 


97 


“ Yes, sir! ” Upon reflection the clerk seemed 
to feel that he was expected to deprecate the word. 
11 It’s the greasers, probably,” he said in apology. 
“ Getting used to the Mexicans kinder takes the 
edge off the color business for Californians. Of 
course the Haddons are rich as Vanderbilt. That 
helps a lot.” 

“ Not with every one,” Howard said, half to 
himself. His eyes rested on a severe matron near 
by, surveying a letter through her lorgnette more 
as if she were arraigning it than reading it. The 
clerk’s eyes, following his, were lowered again in 
haste. His half-shocked expression gave Howard 
to understand that for clerkly eyes to rest upon 
Mrs. Dwight at all savored of lese majeste. 
Philip’s glance was averted for another reason; 
he hoped Mrs. Dwight did not intend to recognize 
him. He felt that on his last visit he had ex¬ 
hausted the possibilities, humorous or otherwise, 
in this friend of Minnie’s who carried with her 
the almost forgotten majesty of San Francisco’s 
bonanza kings. 

At this moment a boy of nine or ten ran down 
the stairs into the lobby. He clasped Howard by 
the arm. 

“ Cousin Philip! Mother says she’ll be down 
in five minutes. Don’t mind waiting, do you? ” 

“ Surely not. Where are you off to, Richard? ” 
Howard caught the boy’s chin in his hand and 
turned the vivid dark face up to his. As always, 
when he looked at Tom’s son, a little pang of 
regret shot through Philip that more than either 


98 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


father or grandmother the child should betray his 
Island blood. 

“ Out fishing with Manuel. Mother said I 
might. ’ ’ 

“ All right, Mr. Piscator. Only see to it that 
you don’t capsize his boat as you did mine! ” He 
shuddered in mock anguish at the remembered 
denouement of their morning’s sport. 

“ No such luck! 99 The boy was off again, dart¬ 
ing from under Philip’s hand like a spurt of wind¬ 
blown flame. All action and enterprise, like 
Minnie’s people; in his looks, Tom’s boy! With 
a sigh Philip leaned an elbow on the desk again. 
The clerk, purple to the ears, coughed behind his 
hand. 

“I’m sure I hadn’t the least idea, sir — but of 
course Mr. Gregory’s different, sir! Every one 
knows he comes of royal blood. ’ ’ 

“And this Mrs. — er — Haddom—doesn’t, I 
infer.” Ennui flattened Philip’s voice. Habitu¬ 
ally interested though he was in the interrelations 
of every group of people with whom his lot was 
for the moment cast — a specialist in life’s little 
ironies, he termed himself — the snobbery of the 
clerk weighed him down again with the oppressive 
sense of what a futile squirrel cage one’s existence 
could become. 

‘‘ Oh, no, sir — not in the least. Quite com¬ 
mon, I should say. But handsome — handsome as 
a queen! ” 

“I’m ready, Philip,” said a thin voice beside 
Howard. 


MERIDIAN 99 

He turned. “ Well, Minnie — which way shall 
we go? To the beach? ” 

“ It’s too windy there, Philip. Too chilly. I’d 
rather go toward the woods if you don’t mind.’’ 

Minnie Gregory would use that plaintively 
weary tone even in Paradise, Philip reflected. 
Unconsciously he sighed again. 

“ Were you speaking of that Mrs. Haddon who 
came to-day, Philip? ” Minnie asked, as they 
stepped from the shade of the hotel piazza into the 
sunny garden. Its beds were bright still with 
borders of scarlet salvia and fragrant with winter 
stock. Philip breathed deep again, but this time 
with delight. He had left Boston in the grip of a 
heavy snowstorm little more than a week before. 

6 ‘ The clerk was speaking of her, Minnie. Why 
do you ask? Is she a friend of yours? ” 

“ Philip! Of course not! ” Mrs. Gregory com¬ 
pressed her thin lips. The cords tightened on her 
scrawny neck. “ She’s a mere upstart, Philip. 
None of the Island people even know who she was. 
Of course with the Haina-Haina plantation-’ ’ 

“ Oh, that Haddon! The old missionary 
family? ” 

“ Not the people you knew. Walter Haddon, 
her husband, was a nephew of the missionary. 
Rather a poor stick, every one called Walter until 
he inherited the estate ten years ago. Even then, 
with such an impossible wife — Well, he’s dead 
row. Died in the Islands during the Spanish 
war.” 

“ You knew her at Wahainalua, then? ” Philip, 


) 



100 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


rejoicing in the scented brightness of the sunshine, 
welcomed any subject that kept Minnie’s tongue 
oft the one he dreaded, — the shortcomings of 
Tom. 

“ I just told you, Philip, I don’t know her at 
all.” Mrs. Gregory accented the statement with a 
pecking motion of the head that made Philip the 
more shudderingly aware of her hat, black velvet, 
uptilted, with two irrelevant stiff white wings 
excrescent on either side. How was it, he won¬ 
dered, that Minnie so unerringly chose the most 
unbecoming styles? Did she think that her family 
position, coupled with Tom’s wealth, put her above 
such considerations, or was it that she did not 
know — or care ? Her flaring bell skirt, sweeping 
the ground, hid one real beauty, her tiny slen¬ 
der feet; her red hair, which should have been 
another, was strained back tightly in an anti¬ 
quated French twist. Philip thought that much as 
he disliked the prevailing pompadour style, it 
would at least do much to soften Minnie’s angular 
visage. 

“ Mrs. Haddon has never been in Wahainalua,” 
Minnie went on. She walked with her eyes fixed 
intently on the ground in front of her, never lifting 
her head. Philip had likened her before in his 
mind to a switch engine, steaming fussily up and 
down always over the same tracks in her narrow 
gossip-infested mind. He reflected now that the 
ripe beauty of the afternoon probably made as 
little impression on her as it might on that engine, 
were it sent out from its dark yards to adventure 


MERIDIAN 


101 


along the bright roadways of the world. Wher¬ 
ever it might travel it would see only tracks —• 
tracks! 

Her voice droned on. “ Whenever Walter came 
to the Islands Mrs. Haddon went abroad. She’s 
been in and out of San Francisco for years. I’ve 
seen her often but it’s through Mrs. Dwight that 
I’ve heard most.” 

The name caught his attention, the all powerful 
bonanza queen. “ But if Mrs. Dwight endorses 
Mrs. Haddon-” 

“ She doesn’t, Philip! How tiresome you are! 
Mrs. Dwight can’t bear the sight of her. And espe¬ 
cially now! It’s dreadful, Philip. That little 
granddaughter of hers, Margery Dwight, was all 
but engaged to young Wheeler, the nice boy who 
was with them at lunch. And then Mrs. Haddon 
carried him off on a trip in that automobile of hers 
and he’s been running after Ada Haddon ever 
since. That’s why Mrs. Dwight came here for the 
holidays — young Wheeler plays in the tennis 
tournament. Everything was going beautifully 
again until Mrs. Haddon appeared to-day! You 
can imagine how Mrs. Dwight feels! ” 

Philip laughed. “ That is a facer for the old 
lady! Is the young Islander a beauty, as they say 

the mother is? ” 

% 

u Who, Ada? She’s not Hawaiian. It’s Alice 
who is Mrs. Haddon’s daughter. Ada is Walter’s 
child. He adopted Alice and gave her his own 
name.” 

“ The Haina-Haina plantation — that must be 



102 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


worth a mint of money to-day,’’ mused Philip. 
“San Francisco’s none too particular. Why can’t 
a handsome Islander, backed by that pot of gold, 
make her own place there in spite of Mrs. 
Dwight’s veto? ” 

“ You’ll understand when you see her, Philip. 
Really, she’s not quite — nice. She’s stagy. And 
for a widow her dresses — well! ” 

“ Does she curl her hair? ” Philip with inward 
amusement reverted in his mind to an early defeat 
of his own, a vain attempt to make Minnie over in 
a guise more attractive to Tom. 

“ No,” said Minnie in dignified reproof, 
adding with unconscious irrelevance, “ it’s lovely, 
straight. ’ ’ 

“ Tom know her? ” asked Howard on impulse, 
and then could have cursed his unwary tongue. 

“ He has never seen her to my knowledge.” 
Minnie’s voice was acid. “ Tom hasn’t spent 
enough time with me in recent years to know my 
friends, much less people I only know by sight.” 
“Oh, come now, Minnie — remember I’m to 

blame for that trip around the world-” 

“I’m not referring to the time he spends trav¬ 
eling, Philip; you know that well. It’s when he’s 
supposed to be living with me—you can see for 
yourself. You’ve been here twenty-four hours. 
Never a sight of him at all! ” 

Philip walked on silently for a space. They 
were well within the woods now, on a solitary path 
somewhat out of the normal orbit of the Mare 
Vista’s guests. His eyes dwelt on the interlacing 



MERIDIAN 


103 


brandies of the pines, netted against the bluest of 
skies. A song sparrow trilled in a blackberry 
tangle. Despite the ocean breeze the air was ns 
soft as spring. And Minnie missed it all — poor 
narrow, bitter Minnie with one obsession, one pas¬ 
sion, one love — or hate — Tom. 

They came at this juncture to a sunny point that 
overlooked a wide stretch of sea. A bench, 
scarred with lovers’ initials, was surmounted by 
the inevitable placard, “ Inspiration Point.” 
Minnie made for it mechanically. That was like 
her, Howard reflected. She followed labels. She 
never prospected new paths for herself. 

He laid his overcoat across her chilly shoulders. 
“ Minnie,” he said, “ I’ve had it in my mind for 
years to give you a talking-to. Plain hard talk, 
straight from the shoulder.” 

She looked at him for a brief moment, a cold 
look out of her greenish hazel eyes. Then she 
gazed stubbornly out to sea. 

“ Why should you give me a talking-to? ” she 
said. 

‘ 1 Because you aren’t playing fair with Tom. ’ ’ 

“ Indeed! In what way, may I ask? ” 

“ In making his life a burden to him with sense¬ 
less recrimination. After eighteen years with him 
aren’t you about ready to accept him for what he 
is? If you aren’t — then divorce is the only 
decent conclusion. I’m sorry to admit that I know 
you’ve got ample grounds.” 

“ Divorce! ” By the swelling cords of her neck 
Philip could guess the working of Minnie’s 


104 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


averted face. “ How can you even mention 
divorce to me! Wasn’t I punished enough for the 
sin of only thinking of it? Would you have me 
sacrifice Richard as I did — the others! ” 

Philip gave a helpless gesture. “ Minnie, my 
dear, I wish you could be brought to reason about 
that terrible time! Why, diphtheria was epidemic 
on that ship! What difference could it possibly 
make if you were with, or running away from, 
Tom? As for sin — you poor child! You were 
nothing but a broken-hearted baby yourself, flee¬ 
ing from an aspect of life as terrible as it was 
unbelievable. The sin, if there was one, was 
Tom’s.” 

“ If there was! Philip, how can you? There 
was a baby. Except for that, I might never have 
known.” 

“ I don’t mean that. Tom was guilty — hut 
isn’t there a difference between guilt and sin ? To 
me, you know, the sin was committed long before 
Tom was born. ’ ’ At Minnie’s obstinate silence his 
hands threw this aspect of the subject aside. “ Oh, 
I know we think differently! But you ought to 
face the real truth, Minnie — that you and Tom 
have fundamentally different natures. You never 
should have married at all. ’ ’ 

“ You brought us together,” said Minnie, still 
gazing stonily out to sea. 

‘ ‘ I know. ’ ’ She pricked an old sense of guilt of 
his own. “ And I persuaded you to go back to him 
when the children died. Perhaps I shouldn’t have 
done that — perhaps your own instinct was right. 


MERIDIAN 


105 


But then again — there ’s Richard! How manly 
the little beggar has grown! Can any of us regret 
that reconciliation, Minnie, when we look at the 
boy? ” 

4 4 Do you know what I think when I look at him, 
Philip? God took my white children from me to 
punish me, and gave me back one that was — 
brown! ” 

“ Minnie! ” he cried. The horror in his voice 
was not meant to rebuke her, but Minnie could not 
know that. 

“ You think Pm as cruel a mother as I am heart¬ 
less as a wife! ” she cried stormily, shaken as he 
had not seen her since that tragic time before 
Richard came into the world. i ‘ I’m not — I’m 
not! I love Richard — more even than — the 
others! But how can I help hating it, fearing it, 
when I see in him only Tom! You know what 
Tom is!” 

“ I know w T hat life has made of Tom,” Philip 
said sternly. “ But before God he wasn’t meant 
to be what he is to-day! ” The long curling lines 
of breakers on the beach below them brought to his 
mind with a sharp stab of pain the image of the 
boy Tom, riding a surf board, head thrown back, 
arrogant, confident of conquering the world as 
triumphantly and carelessly as he surmounted the 
waves. 

“ Do you blame me for that? ” 

“ Blame isn’t the word, Minnie. But we all 
make mistakes. And I think yours is to judge 
Tom by your standards, not by his own. Half of 


106 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


what you condemn him for is no offense in the 
eyes of nine tenths of the world. Take his acting, 
for instance. You shouldn’t have made an issue 
of that. It was an outlet. And he had real talent. 
He might have made a name for himself on the 
stage. That might have been his chance in life 
and you took it from him.” 

‘ ‘ His chance to make love to other women! ’ ’ 

“ For shame, Minnie! Can’t you see he had 
to-” 

“ Yes — if he chose that kind of part! And he 
always did. What if he had made a name as an 
actor? What’s an actor? A creature of no 
reputation-” 

“ It’s idle for us to discuss this, I see, Minnie! ” 
Philip shrugged and rose. “ Shall we go on to the 
golf links ? It’s early yet. ’’ 

The cousins walked on in silence for some 
minutes. 

“ What did you mean — that I ought to take 
Tom as he is? ” Minnie asked at last. 

Howard hesitated. He tried a change of tack. 
“ Oh,” he said, smiling down at her, “ for one 
thing, considering his likes and dislikes a little 
more. For instance, don’t wear a starched linen 
collar to breakfast when you know how he adores 
frills! ” 

A wave of indignant color swept over Minnie’s 
pale face. “ I’m astonished at you, Philip! A 
decent married woman doesn’t concern herself 
with frills.” 

“ Lord help the two of them! ” Philip ejacu- 




MERIDIAN 107 

lated inwardly. For the remainder of the walk 
they talked of indifferent things. 

The winter dusk was drawing in when they re¬ 
entered the hotel. Philip declined Minnie’s half¬ 
hearted suggestion of tea and with the plea of 
letters to write went up to his own room. The 
coal fire he had ordered blazed in the old-fashioned 
grate. He switched off the unshaded electric light 
and drawing up an easy-chair sank into it with a 
sigh of pleasure. Gregarious as he knew himself 
to be, nevertheless he dearly loved his hours of 
solitude. No day went really well for him that 
held in it no opportunity for the silent tabulation 
of its events. He was like a collector of news¬ 
paper clippings, he told himself, pasting into the 
book of his memory the telling events of other 
men’s lives. Was he ever again to have a real life 
of his own f 

Not until an obstinate nervous breakdown, con¬ 
sequent upon his overwork on a now famous cor¬ 
poration case, had compelled his withdrawal from 
active practice, had Howard’s busy days given 
him opportunity to reflect how detached from vital 
interests his maturer years had become. That 
breakdown had occurred three years ago and he 
had long since recovered from its effects. Not¬ 
withstanding his reestablished health he had con¬ 
tinued his travels, had been a drifter, an idler 
really, ever since. Should he enter practice again ? 
Carr had hinted in San Francisco yesterday that 
he would be welcomed there. Did he want the 
pressure of big affairs, or should he settle down 


108 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


at last to write his long-planned book? A new 
century to-morrow: approved time for begin¬ 
nings, new interests, new enterprise. 

He wondered, as he sat gazing into the fire, what 
life still held for him. Adventure? Marriage? 
That he had never remarried was regarded by his 
friends as a token of rare constancy to the dead. 
For long he too had so considered it, but in these 
later years he sometimes dimly questioned the 
motives back of his constancy. Why, in fact, 
should he have married? His was the bachelor’s 
well-peopled solitude. He had many interests, — 
wrote a little, knew pictures and music, felt him¬ 
self a connoisseur in travel. A dilettante, per¬ 
haps; indeed, he thought with almost passionate 
regret that he was a dilettante in both art and life, 
one who deliberately forswore the positive rap¬ 
ture of achievement — the summit moments — for 
the negative happiness of his equable bystander’s 
plain. Was he faithful to Lucy’s memory, really, 
or merely habitually distrustful of life itself? 

For this barren pleasant existence of his un¬ 
doubtedly he had largely to blame, or thank, Tom. 
Tom’s hasty marriage at nineteen — a runaway- 
match following a silly girl’s captivation by the 
college star in the role of Romeo — had been no 
such idyl as his own. With the emotional half of 
Philip’s mind crying out for pardon to Lucy’s 
memory, the intellectual half wondered now 
whether the early termination of his own happi¬ 
ness had been really a sorrow. Marriage for him 
had not worn and faded with the years. The expe- 


MERIDIAN 


109 


rience was still a bright untarnished image of 
what married life is meant to be. No wonder he 
had not been willing to adventure that memory 
on a possible shipwreck like Tom’s. Poor Tom, at 
once a pagan and a cosmopolitan, tied for life to a 
New England spinster with an Anthony Comstock 
creed! 

“ Hello, you old duller! Mooning in the dark 
as usual. Where the deuce is your light? ” 

Tom Gregory slapped Howard heavily on the 
shoulder and turned to fumble for the electric 
switch. The two men did not shake hands after 
their three months’ separation, but grinned affec¬ 
tionately at each other like schoolboys. Philip 
wished that Tom had not turned on the light. His 
voice, breaking into his firelight dreaming, had 
brought back so clearly the image of the slim rider 
of the surf. Who would think that Tom was still 
under forty? His father at fifty had not been 
more heavy-eyed, more listlessly reconciled to 
encroaching years and weight. 

“ Back at last,” said he. “ Where have you 
been? ” 

“ Emeryville — where else? Not Longchamps 
exactly, but one takes what one can get. Rotten 
luck anywhere. You’re looking fit, Phil. What’s 
the game? Staying in California a while, or back 
to Boston, or off to the antipodes again? ” 

“ Can’t make up my mind.” Philip clasped his 
hands lazily above his head. “ Carr has just 
suggested the law, in San Francisco. I don’t 
know. I’m tired of Boston winters and there’s 


110 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


nothing to hold me there now the old man’s gone. 
What do you say, Tom? Will you retain me as 
adviser for the Wahainalua estate? ” 

Tom plumped himself heavily into the compan¬ 
ion easy-chair, laboriously hoisting one fat knee 
over the other. He was already dressed for the 
evening. Carefully groomed though he was, the 
costume was not a becoming one. Not the best 
efforts of tailor or haberdasher could prevent his 
shirt front from bulging out of his waistcoat, his 
heavy jowls from hanging down over his collar’s 
rim. He tucked his hands under his knee. 

“ I’m thinking of selling Wahainalua,” he said. 
Philip looked at him for a moment without 
speaking. He brought his lazy comfortable arms 
rather tensely down to his sides. 

“ The old house too? ” he asked quietly at last. 
“ Yes.” 

“ Got a customer for it? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ How much does he offer? ” 

“ Seventy thousand.” 

“ Easily worth twice that, Tom.” 

11 I know it — damn you! But I need the cash. ’ ’ 
“ Tied up with him yet in any way? ” 

“ No.” 

“ Sell it to me, then. I’ll give you a better 
figure, and it’ll stay in the family, so to speak. 
Richard can have it when I’m gone. ’ ’ 

Tom was silent in his turn. Then he said 
gruffly, ‘ 4 That’s like you, Phil. But nothing doing. 


MERIDIAN 111 

As I said the last time, I’m not letting yon in on 
my mistakes.” 

“You aren’t, this time! I’ve hankered after 
Wahainalua for years. Rather spend my old age 
there than any other place. ’ ’ 

4 ‘ Old age — yon! ’ ’ Tom’s laugh held on mirth. 
“You’ll never be old. God! What did I do with 
my youth! ’ ’ 

“ End-of-the-year grouch, Tom! I feel a bit 
that way myself. Wondering whether the new 
century will bring new adventure or just old age.” 
Philip rose. “We’ll call that settled — about 
Wahainalua. About time for me to dress. You 
and Minnie are dining with me, of course.” 

“ Minnie’s tied us up with the Dwight gang,” 
said Tom, still gazing moodily into the fire. 
“ Cheerful prospect that, for New Year’s Eve! ” 


CHAPTER IX 


LILIHA REAPPEARS 

An hour later the two men were waiting in the 
lobby for Minnie to descend from her room. The 
Mare Vista, this holiday season, held its usual 
winter medley of guests. Philip, glancing about 
him, concluded that Mrs. Dwight, in majestic pur¬ 
suit of young Wheeler, must find herself, except 
for Minnie Gregory, isolated from her own world, 
—the conservative, the solid, the authoritative, the 
select. Except for the few golf and tennis enthu¬ 
siasts it was rather a dowdy crowd. Sacramento 
and Fresno figured almost as largely on the regis¬ 
ter as the metropolis of either north or south. 
Kansas City, on tour for the winter, rubbed elbows 
with Boise and Grand Rapids. There was to be 
dancing later, and expectant maidens, demurely 
festive in ribbon-trimmed organdies, cut mod¬ 
estly round-necked and frilled with lacy berthas, 
anxiously listed each possible dancing man. It 
amused Howard to note how many eyes were 
turned hopefully on him, indifferent on the whole 
to the diversion, while portly Tom, who adored it, 
received never a glance. 

Tom, however, was manifestly not in a holiday 
mood. He stood silently beside Philip, his scowl- 


MERIDIAN 


113 


ing glance roving discontentedly among the ill- 
dressed women. He heaved a sigh as Minnie 
appeared with Richard on her arm. Minnie’s 
dress was embellished with a yoke and long sleeves 
of black net. The high black collar was boned to 
her ears. Her face showed deep lines under the 
electric light. She looked unusually meager and 
old. 

“Pm sorry not to have you with us, Philip/’ 
she said in her toneless voice. “ But Mrs. Dwight 
made such a point of our dining with her-” 

“ Oh, don’t bother about me, Minnie,” said 
Philip. “You know I never mind dining alone.” 

“ By Jove! ” exclaimed Tom, suddenly ani¬ 
mated. “ Here’s one woman who knows how to 
dress! Look at that, Phil! Rue de la Paix or 
nothing! ” 

Philip’s eyes were already on her, a woman 
coming toward them down the broad flight of 
stairs. Her head was averted as she spoke behind 
a fan of black ostrich feathers to a man at her 
shoulder. Philip had been conscious first of a 
smooth coronet of blue-black hair, lustrous as a 
blackbird’s wing, her dress to him had conveyed 
only an impression of clean, beautiful line. It was 
of black jet, he saw now, shimmering like moon¬ 
light on dark waters. It sheathed her closely and 
rippled behind her down the stairs. The corsage 
was cut daringly low, her arms were bare to the 
shoulder. A scarlet flower, provocative as Car¬ 
men’s, called attention to a perfect ear. 



114 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

‘ * Who is she — how does she come to be here 1 ’ ' 
Philip asked Minnie under his breath. 

“ That's Mrs. Haddon," said Minnie's prim 
little voice. 

Laughing, the woman dropped the fan that hung 
by a jeweled chain. Straight at the two men she 
looked. She checked her step, threw up her head 
— the old, remembered gesture — and swept for¬ 
ward impulsively, extending to each a hand. 

“ Philip Howard and Tom Gregory! " she 
cried. “ After all these years! " 

That this could be Liliha! Full-bosomed Juno 
—French-frocked! Philip grasped her hand in 
silence and it was Tom who delightedly ejaculated 
her name. 

Liliha beamed at them, still holding each by a 
hand. “ How glorious to see you! " Her voice's 
timbre had deepened, but it rang in Howard's ears 
like half-forgotten music of his youth. “ And to 
find you now — before dinner! " Her smile grew 
possessive. “ For of course you'll both dine with 
me." 

“ You must meet my wife, Liliha," Tom said 
hastily, turning. But Minnie was moving away. 

Liliha Haddon dropped their hands. “ I see," 
she said slowly. “ Mrs. Clinton T. Gregory — 
and I never guessed that she was Mrs. Tom! " 
Her eyes were fastened darkly on the rigidly 
turned back. “ That your son, Tom? " 

“ Yes," said Tom. His anxious eyes too were 
on the averted head. 

Liliha smiled — not a pleasant smile. “ Run on 



MERIDIAN 


115 


back to her, Tom! ” she said. Her voice indefin¬ 
ably coarsened. Rue de la Paix was overlaid with 
Montmartre. “ Lie out of it if you can. If I’d 
known I was letting you in for a curtain lecture 
I’d never have given you the glad hand! ’ ’ 

“ May I dine with you, Liliha? ” asked Philip 
quickly. Her white teeth gleamed pleasure at him. 
She had barely glanced at him before. 

“ You’re the sport! Come along. Just hold 
your horses, though, until I collect my crowd.” 

She turned from them. Tom slunk back to 
Minnie. As Howard waited he saw the married 
pair meet, saw Minnie lance a question and heard 
the reply of the craven Tom. 

“ An old flame of Philip’s. No, he can tell you 
if he wants.” 

Flame! That was the word for her, Philip 
thought, as she flashed a smile back at him from 
the foot of the stairs. At once fire and sunlight — 
how she dulled the other women by her brilliance^ 
the vitality that radiated from her! The unstud¬ 
ied freedom of her gestures — she used her hands 
like a Frenchwoman — the splendid poise of her 
head made the people surrounding her look stiff 
and ill at ease. 

Liliha was approaching him again, a girl now 
hanging on either arm. Ada Haddon, whom she 
named first, hardly lifted her glance. Pretty, but 
insignificant, Philip found her; delicate, a mouse- 
blond. Alice, dark and piquante, stared at him, 
boldly he thought, out of impudent black eyes, — a 
look that stung him, for from it on the instant he 


116 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

knew that this was a daughter of Captain Heath. 
He glanced from her in quick distaste to the two 
men standing behind. Young Wheeler, the nice 
boy whose wavering affections had power to draw 
Mrs. Dwight out of her predestined orb, was one of 
Liliha’s guests. The other, a thick-set blond man 
in the early thirties, Philip recognized as the jour¬ 
nalist, Max Kingsley, his fellow voyager in the 
Mediterranean some years before. 

Liliha marshaled them to the dining room, 
acclaiming to all who cared to hear her pleasure in 
securing for her table a third man. 

“ Real men at a California resort hotel are 
scarcer than hen’s teeth,” she remarked over her 
shoulder, and Philip started. It was a forgotten 
phrase of his Aunt Abigail’s — Aunt Abbie, dead 
these fifteen years. 

Their progress through the dining room to a 
table in a distant corner drew more attention and 
stir than Philip quite liked to see. Not only was 
Liliha’s presence arresting; her voice, though not 
loud, penetrated like a bronze bell the confusion 
of voices and the low clink of silver on china that 
stirred the room. It was her voice, however, that 
moved him most. Philip had a strange sense of 
having been wrenched from his commonplace ex¬ 
istence back into the past, — the charmed past, 
where life had more promise and meaning than 
now. With an effort he drew his attention back 
to his table companions. 

Liliha was in consultation with an obsequious 
head waiter behind her fan. The nice boy was 


MERIDIAN 


117 


talking tennis to Alice while Ada listened to them 
both. Howard smiled across the table at Kings¬ 
ley, seated on Liliha's other hand. 

‘‘ I’ve been reading yonr Philippine articles 
with extraordinary pleasure/ ' he said. “ I sup¬ 
pose now you're oft for Africa. Davis has gone 
to Ladysmith, I hear.” 

Kingsley shrugged. “ He can go for all of me! 
I'm through with war. Paris Exposition, not the 
Transvaal — that's where this boy strikes out for 
next.” He pulled rather sulkily at his blond 
mustache. 

Philip looked at him in silence. The words con¬ 
firmed an impression left on him by the young 
man's appearance. He was much changed from 
the boyish enthusiast he had formerly known. 
Not Harding Davis himself had been a more fer¬ 
vent seeker of adventure, had taken a keener joy 
in trailing down the news. His youthful promise 
Philip had seen grow into deserved prominence in 
the journalistic world. He ran over in his mind 
the record of that success, — Cuba, Hawaii, the 
Philippines. Was that, perhaps, the trouble? He 
had the look of the tropics on him, the unhealthy 
color, the flabbiness. 

“ Paris will draw many of us this summer,” 
Philip said. “ I suppose you will go, Mrs.— 
Haddon? ” He was conscious of a slight embar¬ 
rassment as he spoke her name. 

“ Better call me Liliha and be done with it,” 
she said, smiling. “ It seemed good to hear the 
old name again. I was surprised when I saw you, 


118 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


Philip Howard! Bless you, man, I’ve hardly 
thought of you for twenty years! ” 

Howard winced, then smiled a bit grimly to him¬ 
self. After all what had he thought of Liliha, say 
for the last ten years! His thoughts had harked 
back to her often enough, it is true, as to a beauti¬ 
ful picture he had seen, or a play. But Liliha her¬ 
self, the woman, had roused in him but one emo¬ 
tion: a passionate gratitude that she had not, in 
her young beauty, chosen to make mad that im¬ 
pressionable Philip of the long ago, — to make 
him mad and marry him out of hand! He knew 
now that she could have done so. What unguessed 
power the witch had had then to raise tumult in 
his heart! Even now his pulses quickened as he 
looked at her. Adventure! He had called to it, 
but an hour ago, and it was beside him now, the 
most beautiful adventure of his past. 

“ Of course we’ll go to Paris,” Liliha went on. 
“ It’s too cold and damp to suit me for long. 
Except for a week or two in the racing season, I 
don’t like Paris. Swear by the Riviera myself. 
But the girls want to see something of it and the 
Exposition now that they’re out of school.” 

“ You bet this girl does! ” said Alice fervently. 
“ I’m going to do Paris for myself — on my 
bike! ” She sat across the table from Howard, 
beside Kingsley. The young man looked down at 
her with a mocking smile. 

“ Alice, just out of the convent, doing Paris on 
a bicycle — that ought to be some show, ’ ’ he said. 

She laughed boyishly back at him. Philip 


MERIDIAN 


119 


looked at her with quick surprised sympathy. She 
was a little tomboy, not the rather bold young 
woman her frank stare at him had implied. He 
did not know that in that moment she conquered 
his instinctive repugnance for her father’s daugh¬ 
ter. He would see her henceforward not as a dis¬ 
agreeable reminder of Heath but as her own 
engaging little self. 

He studied the other girl more attentively, his 
eyes dancing as he became aware of the demure 
simplicity of both girls’ dress. Liliha, herself 
more decolletee than an English dowager, had the 
two youngsters tuckered to the chin. 

“ So you’ve been in a convent school,” he said, 
with a flicker of silent sympathy for the memory 
of Aunt Abigail. He looked at Ada as he spoke. 
She answered in a quick, soft, half-frightened 
voice, 

“ Yes. I loved it. I was sorry to come away.” 

The eyes of all three men rested for a moment 
on this fragile-looking girl, so delicate a foil to the 
vivid, warm-blooded women with whom her lot 
was cast. Ada, conscious of their attention, col¬ 
ored and looked rather appealingly up at Kings¬ 
ley. He gave her in return a smile, so charming 
in its half-deferential gentleness that Philip’s old 
aking for him was for the moment renewed. 

“ I loathed the place! ” said Alice. “ Ran away 
whenever I got the chance.” She laughed with 
impish glee. “ I ran away with mother’s own 
automobile last summer.” 

“ Yes,” said Liliha, in no wise sternly. “ A 


120 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


pretty life you’ve led me, first and last! Ada 
never gave me one tenth the trouble. If I could 
only build up the child’s health she’d never give 
me an uneasy thought,” she added in an anxious 
aside to Philip. 

This was a new Liliha to him, the woman, the 
mother. Unconsciously he had still thought of her 
as the care-free girl he had known. Ripened as 
she was, mature in her rich beauty, she little sug¬ 
gested the matron, the responsible mother of 
grown girls as he knew that rather dull incarna¬ 
tion of womankind. Liliha was more like a con¬ 
tinental woman — the urban type — surrendering 
no tithe of her charm to the duties and cares of 
later womanhood. He looked around the dining 
room. Was that, he wondered, why women’s 
tongues were bitter about her? Did she offend 
the matrons by having retained the lure that they 
had allowed to become overlaid? She was a vul¬ 
gar upstart; stagy, so Minnie had said. Well, so 
were other women who were accepted without res¬ 
ervation in her set. It was less Liliha’s history 
that counted against her, he felt, than her superb 
presence, obscurely reproaching the irreproach¬ 
able for the attraction they had lost. 

Liliha, having with a tentative taste satisfied 
herself that she could endorse the choice of an 
entree, definitely laid aside her preoccupation as 
hostess and beamed around the table at her guests. 

“ I call this grand,” said she. “ If there’s any¬ 
thing I love it’s a party. Good food and good 
wine and nice men ’ ’ 



MERIDIAN 


121 


“ Beautiful women and brilliant conversa¬ 
tion! ” Kingsley completed with an ironic bow 
and a glass raised to his lips. 

Howard wondered angrily whether Liliha felt 
the gibe. Kingsley’s manner to their hostess was 
offending him more and more. Again he was 
reminded of the adventurer whom long ago he had 
so detested. Not Heath himself in Hana’s hut had 
held himself more sneeringly above his company. 
For all Kingsley’s education, all his savoir faire, 
he was indeed strangely like the captain, a bounder 
and an adventurer at heart. 

Liliha gave no indication of having taken offense 
at Kingsley’s scarcely veiled contempt. Her eyes 
wandered smilingly around the great dining room, 
resting with apparent satisfaction on the more 
elaborately gowned women, none of whom com¬ 
pared in magnificence with Liliha herself. Sud¬ 
denly, none the less, her expression grew somber. 
Following her glance, Howard saw that she was 
staring at the Dwight table, not far from them, 
where sat Tom Gregory with his wife and boy. 

Kingsley, his sulkiness warming under the wine, 
was holding the three young people enthralled by 
a war correspondent’s yarn. Howard looked back 
at Liliha, watching her silent stare with a trace of 
disquietude. What dark thoughts were in her 
mind? Liliha turned her head and caught his eye. 

“ Much good it did Tom to marry that blond,” 
said she. “ The brat couldn’t have been blacker 
if he’d been my own.” 

The words were like a blow to Philip. In their 


122 xl DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


intonation, their bitterness, he felt the black im¬ 
print of Captain Heath. Something of the half¬ 
savage revolt that had seized him that afternoon 
on the wooded promontory when he reflected what 
life had made of Tom surged over him anew. 
Liliha too was meant for better things than the 
imitation grande dame before his eyes. As he 
brooded over this, there flashed across his mind a 
vision of what these two half-tamed creatures of 
impulse might have made of life together had not 
fate in the guise of Philip Howard and old Greg¬ 
ory stepped in to tear them apart. Liliha of the 
wind and sea and dancing flame! Tom of the way¬ 
ward paganism, poetic weaver of dreams! The 
gulf behind the white mind and the primitive,— 
that was what old Gregory had feared to have his 
son realize, never realizing himself that for Tom 
no such gulf existed, ever could exist. He was a 
primitive! The gulf lay between him and Minnie, 
the convention-bound, the over-civilized. 

He lifted his absent gaze from the wreath of 
holly on the table to find Liliha smiling at him 
again. He was glad to see that her urbanity had 
been only for a moment overcast. 

“ You’ve stood the years better than Tom — a 
lot better! ” she said, with an appraising glance 
at him. “ Did you marry again? ” 

“ No,” he said. 

She looked him over once more with a sharp¬ 
ened attention that evoked a derisive memory. 
He acknowledged a moment of amused panic as 
Liliha regarded him with that well-remembered 



MERIDIAN 


123 


speculative interest in her eye. But the alarm 
dissolved in regret. The time when such as Liliha 
spelled danger for him was unfortunately past. 

Liliha nodded her head sagely. “ I thought you 
had a kind of single look,” she said and turned 
sleepy eyes another way. 

“ What do you mean? ” he asked, nettled, and 
then furiously realized that he should have been 
clever enough to have kept his irritation to him¬ 
self. 

f 

Behind the opacity of Liliha’s eyes a mischiev¬ 
ous little devil shone out at him, a window sud¬ 
denly opening its shuttered brilliance to the night. 
She patted his arm with her jeweled hand. “ I 
said you hadn’t grown old! ’ ’ She laughed up at 
him. 

Philip Howard, the blase, the self-possessed, 
found himself consuming roast duck with a grim 
determination not to pay any attention to the 
message being pounded home to his brain by his 
heart. He knew that the mocking little devils were 
still sparkling in Liliha’s eyes, but he stubbornly 
looked another way. His gaze sought Ada and 
Alice — gauche little misses! What had their 
youth to offer compared with the seductive woman 
at his .side? 

A harsh clang of falling china and silver called 
startled glances to their table. Philip’s aston¬ 
ished gaze had caught the violence of the move¬ 
ment with which Liliha thrust away from her the 
silver vegetable dishes that a waiter had just set 
down beside her plate. The push carried a plate 


124 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


and a silver cover to the floor. She beckoned 
imperiously to the head waiter. 

“ Take that dish away! ” she said in almost 
inarticulate fury. i ‘ And send me another waiter. 
Doesn’t the damned fool know enough not to set 
before me uncovered food? 

The girls were scarlet. The three men looked 
at Liliha with astounded, questioning eyes. Kings¬ 
ley ’s face then lighted with a slow sarcastic smile. 

“ I remember! ” he said. “ The uncovered 
calabash! It brings bad luck, doesn’t it, Mrs. 
Haddon? Sickness. Sometimes even — death! ” 

Liliha mastered herself with an effort. She was 
very pale. She gathered dignity about her as 
Monna Vanna might have clasped her cloak. 

“ A bogy of my childhood,” she said quietly. 
“ It’s absurd to say one believes in such things — 
with one’s mind. But actions sometimes speak 
louder than either words or beliefs. I owe you all 
an apology. Believe me,. I am fully as astonished 
— as ashamed of Liliha —*as you can be your¬ 
selves.” 

Never before had Philip felt so poignantly the 
latent possibilities in her thwarted womanhood. 
Never had he so admired her, never so little felt 
her spell. The charm was broken, he told himself. 
Chill mists had swept across the lighted windows. 
He smiled to himself again grimly. Old Gregory 
knew! 


CHAPTER X 


TURN OF THE TIDE 

The sands of the century were nearly run. 
About an hour before midnight Howard, in a 
pause of the dancing, found himself alone with 
Kingsley in a small room opening off the ball¬ 
room. In consideration of its filigree woodwork 
and its odor of sandalwood and burning punk the 
nook was known as the Moorish room. Through 
a wide door, beyond dusky draperies and lambent 
gleams of gold leaf, Philip caught a picture of 
bright color and movement, heard a ripple of chat¬ 
ter and laughter. A fire blazed on the hearth 
beside them. It was Kingsley who had discovered 
this retreat and with the consideration that he 
reserved for Ada Haddon alone had ensconced the 
girl there for the evening. Ada danced little. 
The quick two-step exhausted her and she ven¬ 
tured only an occasional waltz. She had just with¬ 
drawn from them, Liliha in attendance, to repair 
damages on a torn Spanish flounce. 

In their brief contacts during the evening 
Howard had found Kingsley a surly enough com¬ 
panion. The young journalist had been drinking 
ever since dinner but to all appearances was still 
complete master of himself. The effect of his fre- 


126 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


quent visits to the bar was perceptible only in a 
growing insolence toward Lililia, and a bolder 
freedom in his mocking flirtation with Alice. He 
had danced repeatedly with both mother and 
daughter. Though languid in his own movements 
he seemed to take a somber pleasure in their untir¬ 
ing elasticity and strength. He had relinquished 
Alice to young Wheeler a moment since. It hurt 
Philip to see the look of gay challenge the girl 
threw back at the journalist over her shoulder as 
she entered the ballroom. No youngster just out 
of a convent school was armed to joust with such 
as Kingsley. What was Liliha thinking of to 
encourage his attentions to these two little girls ? 

After a moment of silence between the two men, 
Kingsley with a short laugh turned to the mantel 
and lighted a cigarette. 

“ War! ” he said, reverting to an earlier topic 
of Howard’s that he had allowed to die between 
them. “ What interest is there in the war of 
armies compared with the everlasting war of 
sex? ” 

Howard was unresponsive in his turn. He won¬ 
dered with distaste whether the fellow was reach¬ 
ing the talkative stage. He had no desire for 
inebriate confidences. He was waiting for Liliha, 
however, and had no choice but to remain. 

“ A rare creature, our hostess! ” Kingsley went 
on. “ And as full of the old Nick yet as that vixen 
daughter of hers. She hasn’t quite made up her 
mind whether she wants me for a son-in-law or is 
going to have a try at me for herself.” He 


MERIDIAN 


127 


laughed again, in ugly scorn. 44 These provoca¬ 
tive women! They deserve what they get. Ada 
now — she’s different. I had a little sister like 
her long ago,” he added, moody all at once. 

“ The better reason, then, to leave Ada alone,” 
said Howard shortly. 

Kingsley smiled lazily up at his curling smoke. 
“ I’m going to marry Ada,” he said. 

“ Indeed! Is she aware of that fact? ” 

44 Not yet.” 

44 So in the meanwhile you make love to Alice. 
I don’t quite see your game.” 

44 Alice and her mother,” amended Kingsley, 
with a chuckle. 44 Strangely, my dear fellow. The 
art of war! The end — peace. The man who 
looks for domestic peace, especially with a rich 
wife, should know enough to sow the seed of dis¬ 
cord ’twixt wife and relatives-in-law.” 

Howard did not answer. Liliha, her arm laid 
across Ada’s shoulder, was reentering the room. 

u No Kanakas in my household,” Kingsley 
went on. “I’m Southerner enough to prefer my 
womenkind to be white.” 

44 Quiet, man! ” said Howard in a stern under¬ 
tone. 44 Do you want Mrs. Haddon to hear you? ” 

Kingsley looked behind him. 44 Does it mat¬ 
ter? ” he asked with brutal indifference. 44 She 
must be used to ignoring remarks on color by this 
time.” 

The distant orchestra at this moment struck into 
the 44 Blue Danube ” waltz. Kingsley strolled 
over to Ada with a smile. 


128 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


“ The dance of dances! ” he said. “ I’ve been 
hoping all evening to have this with yon.” The 
color rose in the girl’s face as he led her away. 

Howard glanced after them, frowning, before 
he turned to Liliha. “ Shall we join the dancers 
too ? ” 

She shook her head. “ It’s pleasant to be rid 
of them all. I’d rather stay here if you don’t 
mind.” Crossing to the fireplace she sank into a 
big cushioned chair. She moved more slowly than 
the old Liliha, but every gesture still showed flexi¬ 
bility and strength. 

“ Any one would know Ada was no kin to you, 
Liliha, ’ ’ Howard said on impulse. 

Liliha did not comment on this implied famil¬ 
iarity with her connubial history. 

“ She’s the only human creature who has ever 
really loved me,” she said morosely. 

He lifted his eyebrows. “ Alice? ” he sug¬ 
gested. 

She shrugged. “ A child loves its mother from 
instinct — as a matter of course. There’s no 
choice — no compliment — in that love.” 

Philip thought he held the clew to her bitterness. 
As the hours lengthened he had seen her mood 
darken. To a superficial observer there would 
have seemed little cause for the evening to fail of 
satisfaction to her. She had had a real success, a 
triumph, among the men, at least. Philip had 
been astonished by the distinction of her manner 
when with strangers. With them she allowed her¬ 
self no lapses into slang. Her language was as 


MERIDIAN 


129 


perfect as her gown. She had, when she chose to 
exercise it, unquestioned social address. “ The 
facility for picking up externals.” It was strange 
how phrases of old Gregory’s kept recurring to 
his mind. Liliha wore cultivation — civilization 
— at will, like a mask. But to-night it galled her. 
She had no pleasure, was not interested, in her 
success. More than once he had caught her frown¬ 
ing absently past the men who clustered around 
her to the women who held aloof. Her darkest 
looks had fastened always upon Minnie Gregory 
and Mrs. Dwight. 

With this aspect of her discontent before him he 
tried to reason with her mood. 

“ Perhaps you look for love in the wrong place, 
Liliha,” he said. “ Why should you want love, 
admiration even, from empty heads like those in 
there? ” He nodded in the direction of the ball¬ 
room.. “ You’re too intelligent a woman to waste 
your time fighting for recognition from people 
who aren’t worth half the consideration that’s 
heaped upon them — that they heap upon them¬ 
selves.” 

The plaint of the music fell upon their silence; 
insistently melancholy its strain, behind the throb¬ 
bing rhythm of the dance. 

“You can say that,” said Liliha bitterly at last. 
“You belong there — inside. All my life I’ve 
been like this — sitting outside, watching my — 
betters — dance. Among them, but apart.” 

Another silence lengthened between them. Ada, 
on Kingsley’s arm, passed the door. Philip’s 


130 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


thoughts went back to Liliha’s comment on the 
girl. 

“ Aunt Abbie — Mrs. Adams — loved you, 
Liliha, ,, he said abruptly. 44 She was heartbroken 
when you disappeared.” 

“ Not me! ” said Liliha. “ It wasn’t me she 
loved, but the creature she thought she’d made. 
Oh, it’s true enough! Ada alone loves Liliha as 
she is.” 

“ Do you love Ada? ” he asked. It was in his 
mind to speak of Kingsley, but her reply diverted 
him from the intention. 

“I’m sorry for Ada. I always have been. She 
makes me want to protect her — take care of her. 
That’s why I married her father — one of the 
reasons. He was killing the child with ignorance 
and neglect.” 

Tenderness — he had always known that Liliha 
had it in her. Philip considered her thoughtfully, 
then looked away. He lighted a cigarette and 
stood, frowning intently at the fingers that held 
it, nesting his elbow in his other hand. 

“ How long did you stay with Heath, Liliha? ” 
he asked at last. 

‘ 1 Two years. ’ ’ Liliha sat very still, gazing into 
the flames. 

“ He didn’t marry you? ” 

“ No.” 

Philip, stealing a glance at her, surprised a look 
of wistful longing on her face. It startled him. 
So had she, sitting beside him on the headland 
long years before, gazed out to sea at the schooner 


MERIDIAN 


131 


Rosalie. Had love for that scoundrel managed to 
survive those years ? 

u Why did you leave him? ” he asked shortly. 

Liliha smiled, a slow hitter smile. “ He left me. 
Sitting on a bench in a park. With Alice three 
months old.” 

“ That was in Honolulu? ” 

“ No, in Sydney.’’ 

“ But you married Haddon in Honolulu, didn’t 
you ? When was that ? ’ ’ 

“ Three years later.” 

Of those three years Liliha did not speak; no 
one would ever hear her speak, Philip felt con¬ 
vinced of that. From their dark shadow she had 
emerged — as what other woman could ? — harder, 
stronger, the more grimly determined to rise 
above them, to rise to the very top. 

Liliha threw those years from her now. She 
leaned forward in her chair and said with a new 
animation, “ I was keeping a boarding house then, 
a good one, on Nuannu Street. He came there 
with his baby — about the age of mine. She’d 
been sick, was nothing but a little bag of bones. 
And Alice was so big and rosy and bouncing. I 
couldn’t bear to look at the child. I had just heard 
that Heath was dead — shot aboard the Rosalie 
by his own mate. Nothing seemed to matter much. 
Haddon wasn’t rich then,” she added in obscure 
self-exculpation. “ I more than paid my half for 
many years.” 

“ He didn’t know — about Heath? ” 

u No,” she said, with a touch of anger. “ What 


132 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


difference could that make to him? He’d had his 
mating, I mine. He knew that my man was dead. ’ ’ 

“ I infer, however, that you didn’t omit the un¬ 
important ceremony with him? ” Philip was at 
once sorry for the gibe, hut Liliha did not 
resent it. 

“ I didn’t love him,” she said, her wistful gaze 
again upon the flames. 

In Liliha’s eyes, evidently, her loveless second 
“ marriage ” needed all the sanctification the 
Church could give — a quaint philosophy to come 
out of New England via Aunt Abigail! Philip, 
smiling to himself, drew up a chair and sat down, 
gazing like Liliha into the flames. After all, who 
could say that this was a stranger concept of mar¬ 
riage than that in Minnie’s mind? Philip, how¬ 
ever, did not as usual follow the fancy to the end. 
Back of his appreciation of her unconscious irony 
smoldered a dull resentment kindled by his real¬ 
ization that Liliha still enthroned the memory of 
Captain Heath, — a resentment less perhaps for 
the feeling than for her free revelation of it before 
him. Why was it, he wondered, that never from 
his earliest meeting with her had she troubled to 
hide behind the usual equivocation of sex? Did 
she not know her power, feel the quick surge of 
his attraction toward her, that half-passion of 
which he himself more than once had been almost 
fearfully aware? Perhaps she felt that passion 
could have no lasting part in him. Perhaps she 
knew him better than he knew himself; knew that 
something had died in him at Lucy’s death, — his 


MERIDIAN 


133 


susceptibility to the power of any woman. No 
woman had ever really held him, had really 
counted in his life. He missed, for the moment, 
the simpler implication: that he, fastidious, reluc¬ 
tant to grapple with the grosser realities of life, 
could make no strong appeal to Liliha. She felt 
his fineness and from that element in him and from 
his sympathy was impelled to confidence. Before 
him pent-up feeling could find safe expression, 
could in a measure reveal Liliha to herself. So 
convent-bred Ada might find her outlet in the con¬ 
fessional. So only, impersonally, would a woman 
speak to a man for whom she could not care. 

Some hint of this did at last enter Philip’s con¬ 
sciousness as he watched her musing face. 

u You’re a young woman still, Liliha,” he said. 
“ You’ll marry again. I hope with all my heart 
that it will be a happy marriage for you at last.” 

“ That kind of happiness comes to a woman 
only once,” she answered him, still moodily. “ If 
ever I marry again it ’ll be a man who can give me 
a place in the world. Kingsley’s a famous man,” 
she added after a moment of cogitation. “If it 
weren’t for Alice, I’d be tempted to take him on 
myself.” 

“ You mean Ada? ” he asked gropingly, coming 
out of his own reverie with a start. 

“ Alice, I said! ” Liliha’s voice was sharp. 
“ What’s Ada got to do with Kingsley? Would 
anybody but a milksop like that Wheeler boy as 
much as look at Ada with Alice around? ” 

Philip hesitated. “ Frankly, I’d hate to see 


134 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


either of them — or you — married to Kingsley. 
He ’s a clever chap — used to be a charming one. 
But he drinks, I’m afraid. Don’t you think he’s 
a bit of a bounder — a brute ? ’ ’ 

Liliha laughed, not without harshness. “ He’s 
the kind of man most likely to come our way. 
And, frankly, as you say, he’s the kind I like.” 

She rose, bending her height to lean a bare arm 
along the mantel shelf, and laughed into the mir¬ 
ror that hung above it. “ Why do I always like the 
wrong kind, and why does the wrong kind always 
like me? Can a woman change her nature, Philip 
Howard? What chance would I have with a man 
like you? ” 

Her eyes, dancing, seductive, challenging, met 
his in the glass. Breathless she held him for an 
instant, then suddenly he lost her. She was still 
gazing in the mirror, but past him. He turned. 
In the ripple of applause that followed the close of 
the dance Tom Gregory had appeared in the door¬ 
way with Minnie on his arm. Philip rose to meet 
them, but before he could speak Minnie pivoted 
Tom away, back into the ballroom out of sight. 

Liliha drew down her arm from the mantel shelf 
and stood erect. Her fingers tore at the feathered 
fan. 

44 Tom’s not been near me all evening! ” she 
said in a smothered tone. “ Not because he 
doesn’t want to come — haven’t I seen his sneak- 
ing eyes?—but because I’m not good enough to 
meet his wife. His wife! ’ ’ She laughed coarsely. 


MERIDIAN 135 

“ That poor flat-chested thing! ” She lifted her 
own bosom with a heavy breath. 

Across Philip’s mind there flashed the memory 
of the small rounded breasts laid, long since, upon 
the bosom of an opal sea. His heart sickened with 
the renewal of an old, still poignant regret. 

“ Shall we join the others in the ballroom? ” he 
asked dully. 

Liliha’s fan snapped under the torture of her 
hands. She jerked it from its jeweled chain and 
flung it on the flames. 

“ Not until you’ve told me one thing! ” she said, 
her voice husky with anger. “ What is it that 
makes one woman a leader and another — de¬ 
spised? That woman can command any one — 
even Mrs. Dwight. Why — why? She’s not good, 
nor beautiful, nor clever. She’s married to a 
hapa-haole. Her child’s blacker than my own. 
It isn’t anything they know about me, either. 
Until you came to-night, not a living soul con¬ 
nected Mrs. Haddon with Liliha Knight. No one 
can say a word against me — not for these fifteen 
years-’ ’ 

“ Mother! Mother! ” Alice ran in from the 
ballroom. “ Come, you and Mr. Howard. Every 
one is going out to supper. We mustn’t miss the 
chance to drink to this new year.” 

Liliha kept her back turned to her daughter. 
“ Coming,” she said. She looked steadily at her 
face in the mirror until the distorted passion in it 
was smoothed out, then she led the way from the 
room. 



136 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


In spite of her smiling face the pose of her head 
suggested to Howard an avenging fury, rage and 
revolt incarnate. She did not speak as her group 
assembled and followed her into the dining room, 
except to give a curt command to a waiter. 
Hardly had they seated themselves when a glass 
of champagne was poured for her. She drank it 
down like water. It seemed to steady her. She 
glanced with a more natural smile around the 
room. 

The tables were filling rapidly now, a noisier, 
more jovial company than at dinner time. Laugh¬ 
ter rang high. There was a continuous sound of 
popping corks. Philip, looking about him, noticed 
to his distress that Mrs. Dwight’s table was the 
next but one to their own. 

Liliha glanced across at Tom and turned to 
Philip. “ My husband that might have been! ” 
she said in a contemptuous undertone. “ Happy 
man! Look at him — bored to tears. I bet you 
anything you like that I have him here at our table 
before the year’s a half hour old! ” 

She gave him no opportunity to answer, but 
turned to consult with Kingsley over a menu card. 
Philip threw a troubled look at Tom, sitting be¬ 
tween the old dowager and his wife, as absent and 
silent as the shamed, slighted little girl with them, 
Margery Dwight. Under cover of the two 
women’s talk, Tom’s eyes were furtively watch¬ 
ing the livelier table where his friend sat. 

With her second glass of champagne Liliha’s 
earlier urbanity returned. There was this differ- 


MERIDIAN 


137 


ence in her manner, however, that always, through 
her talk and laughter, she kept an oblique atten¬ 
tion fastened on Tom. All of her little group 
succumbed to her spell. Young Wheeler watched 
her in youthful adoration. Kingsley was amused, 
almost conquered in spite of himself. Alice was 
her mother’s laughing second; Ada smilingly 
content and happy in her own shy way. Seeing 
the half-envious glances cast on the gay group 
from adjoining tables, Philip felt himself doubly 
alone in his nightmare dread of what this spark¬ 
ling, captivating woman, envy-baited, might find 
it in her raging heart to do. 

Just as a blazing chafing dish was set before 
them, a blare of cornets and trombones announced 
the turn of the year. The old century went out to 
shrieks and catcalls, laughter, uplifted glasses, 
waving napkins and showers of confetti. The new 
century was ushered in with meaningless hand¬ 
clasps between indifferent people whom accident 
found side by side, with singing in half-maudlin 
solemnity an atrociously lagging “ Auld Lang 
Syne.” Howard’s thoughts went back a year,— 
he and Tom alone on New Year’s Eve in the little 
Haute Savoie village of St. Nicholas de Veroce. 
Crisp cold moonlight throwing tapering fir 
shadows across a snowy road; against a starry 
sky the moonlit radiance of icy, illimitable Mont 
Blanc. Silence, peace, beauty! In such manner 
should the years be sped, not like this! Did Tom 
remember? Philip’s eyes sought his friend. He 
was silently pledging Liliha over a brimming 


138 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


glass, — Liliha triumphant, a gleam of malice in 
her dark eyes. 

They sat down again to supper. Dread was 
growing in Philip. The rich food choked him. 
He fingered an untasted glass. Liliha ’s laughter 
was growing louder, more unrestrained. Young 
Wheeler looked embarrassed, half ashamed. Ada 
caught a reflection of uneasiness from him. 

“ Oh, mother! ” she remonstrated in a low 
voice as Liliha again filled her glass. “ You know 
you never take champagne! ’ ’ 

Liliha watched the breaking bubbles smilingly. 
“Little girls mustn’t give advice — not unless 
they wish to be sent to bed,” she said without 
rancor. 

Kingsley reached for his cigarette case. 

4 ‘ That 9 & right — that 9 s what I want , 9 9 said 
Liliha, and held out a glittering hand. 

Young Wheeler found a rather shaky voice. 
“ That’s all right for a woman in Paris, Mrs. 
Iiaddon, but — really — it — it’s not done here. ’ ’ 

“ Everything goes to-night,” said Kingsley, 
giving her a light. “ Let joy be unrefined.” He 
was watching her closely now, a sneering look of 
satisfaction on his face. 

“Un-re-fined!” Liliha repeated after him. 
Her elbow was on the table. She bowed her eyes 
against the back of her hand and shook with un¬ 
controllable laughter. She peered from under her 
hand at Philip. “ Can you be unrefined? ” she 
asked and shook with laughter again. In another 
moment, preternaturally solemn, she lifted her 


MERIDIAN 139 

head, puffed lazily at her cigarette and gazed out 
through the smoke straight at Tom. 

Alice, Philip could see, had not yet realized that 
anything was wrong. He was afraid that might 
be because she too had had too much champagne. 
But Ada was all one painful glow of shame. Could 
he not get the girls away? A strain of music from 
the ballroom quickened strangely his feeling of 
dread. The melody had a haunting familiarity. 
What association could it possibly have for him? 
He shook off the feeling impatiently. 

“ The dancing is beginning again,’’ he said, 
looking with intention at young Wheeler. The 
boy had not tasted his wine. “ Shall we not go 
back to the ballroom? Miss Ada, I claim this 
dance with you.” 

Liliha looked up in sudden fury from her brood¬ 
ing gaze at Tom. “ You sit still where you are! ” 
she said to Ada. “ Don’t you dare to break up 
my party, or I’ll smack you in the face before the 
whole crowd. ’ ’ 

The last rag of refinement was gone from her. 
Her voice rang raucous and coarse. A bit of the 
harlot, a bit of the fishwife, she sat before them 
stripped of the gentility that had clothed her for 
fifteen years. 

Anger left her as suddenly as it had come. 
“ Listen to that music! ” she said. “ ‘ The Beach 
of Waiakaie ’ they call it when they dance the two- 
step to it here. But it’s mine — my hula. You 
ought to remember that, Tom Gregory! Tom — 
my chief! My k-king! ” Laughing unsteadily, 


140 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


she made as if to rise and go to him, but sat down 
again at Philip’s touch on her arm. 

“ Liliha, for heaven’s sake — the girls!” he 
said. 

The music penetrated louder, distorted, conven¬ 
tionalized, thrillingly familiar, unmistakably the 
old chant of the dawn. Liliha shook off his hand. 
Her arms began to sway rhythmically. 

“ E uliuli kai, e Pele he akua e -” her voice 

pealed out over the room. In the sudden silence 
Liliha rose to her feet. Arms, head, body — it was 
not she who followed the rhythm; rhythm flowed 
from her; she was rhythm herself. Suddenly she 
stopped and stared about her, moved her body un¬ 
easily. “ That’s not it,” she muttered. “ Not 
right. Whoever heard of — dancing a hula — in 
stays? ” 

The scraping of chairs had ceased, the retreat 
of slippered feet. A door slammed, shutting out 
the recurrent haunting strain. Three or four 
waiters in a corner whispered behind their hands. 
Tom too had gone, along with the other outraged, 
scandalized guests. The little stricken group 
around Liliha’s table sat alone, Kingsley smok¬ 
ing, blowing slow rings into the air. 

Liliha turned and looked at them. Philip saw 
consciousness stir in her, but it could not break 
through the torpor of her brain. She wavered 
back to the table and fell across it, overturning 
the glasses, hiding her blue-black head in her arms. 



CHAPTER XI 


AT THE EBB 

One Sunday afternoon in August of that year 
Howard stood on the new Alexandre III bridge 
trying to make up his mind in which direction to 
start out for a solitary walk. He had planned, 
earlier in the day, to let the vesper hour find him 
in the dusky silence of Notre Dame. But the 
afternoon did not lend itself to indoor reverie. A 
brisk wind had sprung up. Pennants were gayly 
flying from the Exposition towers downstream. 
Passers-by struggled jovially with clinging skirts 
and uncontrollable hats. There was even more 
stir and jollity than is usual to a Latin Sunday. 
Philip ’s countrymen, according to their usage, had 
scattered for the day to Versailles and St. Cloud 
and Fontainebleau, leaving the evanescent city 
along the Seine to the Gallic celebration of the 
Sabbath that he always loved. The Exposition of 
a week day was an American promenade. But 
to-day the United States exhibits were all closed. 
It would be pleasant to visit the place for once 
without the voice of Oshkosh perpetually dinning 
delight in his ear. 

He paused to study the single span of the 
bridge, to note the effect of the bronze figures 


142 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

that surmounted the pylons, the picture that they 
framed of the dome of the Invalides. Full of 
movement, these winged figures, full of vigor and 
life. They seemed to strike the keynote of the 
city in its exposition mood. His thoughts went 
back to the former exposition, eleven years before'. 
As he strolled on downstream he tried without 
great success to focus in his mind blurred im¬ 
pressions of the buildings and art of that earlier 
time. After all, what attracted one to these peri¬ 
odic crystallizations of the advertising spirit was 
less their architecture, their art, or cunningly dis¬ 
played wares of trade than their vast concourse of 
people, the human comedy involved in this con¬ 
flict of holiday humor and mercantile greed. 

People of every nation under the sun gathered 
together en fete, gathered together in the work 
that drew the crowds, fascinated, to this spot, in 
the cunning that enticed coins from unwary 
pocketbooks. Every gamin in the city expected 
to have his share of the spoils. The old women 
vendors of newspapers and oranges and park 
chairs seemed to have multiplied fourfold, — those 
terrible old women of Paris with their endless 
clamor for sous. 

In this victoria a French officer and a bishop; in 
that a white-robed sheik. Afoot here, on the quay, 
a Gascon peasant in blue beret and red sash. In¬ 
teresting to know what some of these provincial 
people, draw for the first time out of their placid 
grooves, really in their hearts thought of it all. 
Howard smiled to himself, remembering the fat 


MERIDIAN 


143 


country cure he had seen in the Beaux Arts palace 
but now, making for a Holy Family and trying to 
scuttle past a Venus unscathed. He wished that 
Tom were here with him. This would be an aft¬ 
ernoon after Tom’s own heart. A little frown 
creased Philip’s forehead and he pushed the 
thought aside. He was worried about Tom. 

Down near the Pont d’Alma Philip paused 
again. The effect of an Oriental city those flat 
domes and minarets that clustered about the Tro- 
cadero gave. Under the low glint of the sun they 
had a magical brilliance against the sky. The 
Seine was glowing already with afternoon gold. 
The cafes along the quays were thronged. Should 
he dine early and keep the later evening free to 
watch day turn to illumined night along the river? 
Philip decided to push on, past the Siberian 
palaces, to a little restaurant near the Chinese 
section that reminded him of Chinatown in the 
city by the Pacific that he had chosen definitely 
for his future home. 

As he approached the Chinese Village he 
glanced at his watch and saw that it was barely 
six o’clock. He decided to loiter for a while in 
the quiet spot, sheltered both from the breeze and 
from the stream of sightseers. The benches under 
the trees were empty except for the one nearest 
him, where a woman in mourning sat sidelong, her 
face turned from him. Her solitude and her black 
dress gave him a vague sense of pity. This was 
no place for sad hearts, amid the tinsel glitter 


144 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


of artificial joy. Colder and harder even than a 
normal city was Paris in her exposition mood. 

He was about to pass on to the next bench when 
he was arrested by something in the rigidity of the 
woman’s attention. He turned his own head to 
follow the direction of her gaze. 

u By Jove, what a picture! ” he said to himself. 

On the doorstep of a pagoda only a few yards 
away sat a half-naked Chinese baby, a child of 
perhaps two years old. His fat little legs were 
turned out, his hands fondled his toes. Evidently 
he had escaped from under a busy mother’s hand, 
for his few garments hung on him unbuttoned and 
awry. He sat there, complacent as Buddha, gaz¬ 
ing with Oriental inscrutability out on a new and 
diverting world. Only for a moment did his 
scrutiny last. A lavender-brocaded, betrousered 
mother rushed out at him with voluble outcries 
and snatched him back to those inner fastnesses 
of the village where some sort of domestic life was 
still carried on. 

Howard laughed aloud. The woman on the 
bench turned to give him a startled glance. To his 
amazement he recognized Liliha. He almost doubt¬ 
ed the evidence of his eyes, for it was a Liliha 
without sparkle, without vitality, almost without 
charm. A mourning bonnet concealed her hair. 
Her eyes were deeply circled and had a haunting 
look of pain. 

“ You! ” she said. “ How strange to find you 
here. ’ ’ 

He took her hand and sat down beside her. The 


MERIDIAN 


145 


remembrance of their last meeting was so strong 
upon him, the contrast of this dun woman with 
that brilliant memory so amazing, that he found 
himself without words. He took refuge in the im¬ 
mediate present. 

“ I, like you, was attracted by that child,’* he 
said. 

Her lips showed the ghost of a smile. “ He 
made me think of Honolulu, long ago. The Chinese 
babies used to come out on the doorstones to sit 

in the sun. They looked so wise, so old-” 

She broke off suddenly and threw back her head 
with something of her old fire in the gesture. 
“ Why do you always make me talk of old 
times! ” She stopped again and drew in her 
underlip, biting it savagely. ‘ ‘ I haven’t seen you 
since I made that exhibition of myself at the Mare 
Vista.” 

“ No,” he said, awkwardly enough. Liliha and 
her whole party had vanished from the Mare Vista 
before the New Year’s day had dawned. He had 
not seen nor heard from them since. It flashed 
across his mind now that his last copy of the San 
Francisco Argonaut had announced the engage¬ 
ment of young Wheeler and Margery Dwight. 

“ That was half your fault,” she said morosely. 
“ You shouldn’t have started me thinking of 
Heath and old times. Especially not after that 
fool waiter had upset me so ’ ’ She shud¬ 
dered and touched her black dress. “ The sign 
came true, too, ’ ’ she said under her breath. ‘ 4 You 
knew? ” 




146 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


“ Yes,” he said gently. 11 I was grieved to hear 
it. The San Francisco papers reported your 
daughter’s death in the same issue as Ada’s mar¬ 
riage to Kingsley.” 

She stared at him with a hard look that he 
could not understand. 

“ You’ve got the names wrong. That’s what 
should have happened, perhaps. But it was Ada 
who died. ’ ’ 

“ Ada! ” he said in bewilderment. “ Then the 

papers confused the names. I remember-” 

He checked himself. He remembered Minnie’s 
biting comment on the despatch. The news item 
had revived cruel gossip in San Francisco for a 
day. “ But the marriage notice — did Alice 
marry Kingsley! ” He had not meant his voice 
to reveal so much surprise. 

She looked at him sharply. 

“ Perhaps he told you that he meant to marry 
Ada — that Kanakas were second choice! He’s 
told us that — since. He gets quite confidential 
when he drinks. Poor little Ada died of pneu¬ 
monia the week before he reached Paris. But he 
was badly in debt. He had to raise money some¬ 
how. So he persuaded Alice to marry him. Per¬ 
suaded ! She was mad about him. Poor little Ada, 
did I say! She’s the happy one. She died.” 

He thought to himself as he looked down at her 
clenched hands that this was a Liliha stranger 
to him than the woman who had flashed back into 
his life across a span of twenty years. Flame, he 
had called her that night. Through all the fury 



MERIDIAN 


147 


of her jealousy, in the smart of her thwarted am¬ 
bition, in her abasement even, he had been able to 
trace in her the old allurement of his dream bather 
of the dawn. Now he grieved for the loss of the 
nymph in her as he might have grieved for Liliha 
dead. This was a different woman, a woman of 
cold steel. All the fire of her nature was tempered 
to a biting edge of bitterness and hate. 

‘ ‘ Are they — the Kingsleys — in Paris now ? ’ ’ 
he asked, after a painful silence. 

“ They’re with me. I have an apartment on the 
Avenue Carnot. He has to have some one to leave 
her with when he’s amusing himself with his 
friends.” 

“ She’s well? ” 

“ There’s a baby coming in December,” she 
said, as simply as a continental woman would have 
done. For a moment she was silent, then she threw 
out her hands in a savage gesture. “ Oh, if it’s 
only a boy! I looked at that baby there,” her 
backward-thrown head conjured up the child at 
the door, “ and I asked myself what difference his 
color will ever make to him. Yellow race, brown 
or white, a man has his place in the world and 
keeps it. Look at Tom Gregory! Does his brown 
blood make life any harder for him? But we 
brown women — we live eternally under some 
white man’s scorn.” 

Aching sympathy for her silenced the correction 
on his lips. He knew too well what evil Tom’s 
brown blood had brought to him. A house divided 
against itself; that had long been Howard’s excuse 


148 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


for the waywardness that had done so much to 
wreck the life of his friend. But Liliha knew noth- 
ing of that. She saw only Tom’s apparently un¬ 
questioned position in a world that had denied 
entrance to her. Howard felt as never before what 
her own sense of isolation must be. Before he 
recognized her his heart had gone out in sympathy 
toward her, a solitary mourner in a jubilant, un¬ 
caring city. But loneliness could be no new thing 
to Liliha. He remembered how, long ago, when 
he himself had first realized the single-handed 
game she must play with the fate, he had thought 
of intrepid canoe voyages on far Polynesian seas. 
But in the clearer perspective of the present he 
saw that Liliha in her voyage was more completely 
solitary even than those bands of brown adventur¬ 
ers. Her craft stood out alone to sea. 

Even such sympathy as he could give, he who 
no longer was stirred to find himself beside her, 
must be rare to Liliha. 

‘‘ I wish with all my heart that there was some¬ 
thing I could do for you,” he said, under the im¬ 
pulse of this last thought. 44 But I’m called back 
to San Francisco. I leave in a day or two. Will 
you be back there this winter! ” 

Liliha shook her head. “ My goose is cooked in 
San Francisco,” she said grimly. “ I’ll never 
show my face there again.” After a pause she 
rose and said with a softer expression, “ You can 
do one thing — come home and dine with us. Alice 
doesn’t get out at all. It will do her good to talk 


MERIDIAN 149 

to yon — one man who’s never been ashamed to 
be seen in her company.’’ 

“ I’ll come with pleasure,” said Philip, rising. 
“ Shall I find a cab? ” 

“ No, I would rather walk. It’s not far. Near 
the Etoile. ” 

Liliha’s apartment, she told him, she had rented 
furnished from rich Brazilians whose year in 
Paris had been abruptly terminated by illness at 
home. It might have been rented from an up¬ 
holsterer, Philip reflected, for all it showed of per¬ 
sonality. It reeked of money, money recklessly 
expended without taste. In its lavishness of gold¬ 
framed mirrors, onyx clocks and frescoed walls it 
suggested a French bourgeois milieu. But no 
French interior he had ever seen had given him 
such an impression of chaotic, meaningless dis¬ 
play. The overcrowded furniture was awkwardly 
disposed. Not a single chair invited rest. There 
were no evidences of daily occupation, no women’s 
work, no books. The impersonality of everything 
about the place depressed him. Only desperately 
unhappy women lived so detached from their sur¬ 
roundings. 

The forlorn drawing-room brought still another 
aspect of the change in Liliha to Philip’s mind. At 
the Mare Vista the battle lust in her, the superb 
way she had held her head high despite the ostra¬ 
cism of the women, had challenged his warmest 
admiration. This room suggested to him cessation 
of struggle, of effort itself. A half hour’s con¬ 
sideration might have transformed the tasteless 


150 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

apartment into a home. That Liliha with her 
abounding energy, her strong originality, should 
have lived in it for long months, unheeding, be¬ 
spoke the dull acquiescence of defeat. 

The two women joined him only as dinner was 
announced. Alice, Philip instantly felt, had no 
interest in seeing him at all. He w T as shocked at 
the change in the girl. The girl, indeed, w T as gone. 
She seemed to have lived through ten dragging 
years in one. She was restless, impatient with 
her mother and with him. She had none of the 
half-narcotized calm of the expectant mother, none 
of the happiness. Her haggard eyes smoldered 
with resentment at her lot. 

Philip made a mental calculation. The girl could 
he barely nineteen, — Liliha’s age when she had 
been deserted by Heath. But Liliha had grown up 
in the realities of a grass hut, Alice in the evasions 
of a convent school. Liliha, whatever might have 
been the savage passion that carried her out of 
herself at last, could have been said to have made 
her choice with open eyes. She had known what 
life would hold for her when passion died. He 
could imagine her sitting on the park bench in that 
unfriendly Australian city, her infant on her lap, 
calmly casting up her reckoning with fate. Alice 
would never dream that there could be a reckoning 
for her. He recalled her tomboy assurance on 
New Year’s Eve, the assurance w 7 ealth gives to its 
children that the w r orld is theirs to command. An 
engaging youngster she had seemed to him that 
night, in the cursory notice his absorption in Liliha 


MERIDIAN 


151 


had accorded her. He could imagine Kingsley 
after their marriage captivated by her almost 
against his will for a time. He would have liked 
her madcap spirit. He had not been at all a bad 
sort of fellow in his youth. Howard could believe 
that he might even have meant to deal squarely 
with the girl whose money put him on easy street. 
But he would not be likely long to have patience 
with an ailing woman, consideration for one not 
beautiful. Howard sighed to read the sordid 
truth. Alice, unwillingly bringing a new life into 
the world, had thereby lost her own chance of hold¬ 
ing to her the one life for which she cared. 

It was a dreary dinner. He and Liliha talked 
meaningless gossip of empty things. They were 
finishing coffee when Alice spoke out of a long 
brooding silence. 

“ There! ” she said. “ Max’s knock! I told 
you, mother, that we shouldn’t have sat down to 
dinner so soon.” 

Liliha took the reproof meekly. She rang the 
bell for the maid. “ Dinner for the master, Lu- 
cile,” she said in French. “ And as quickly as 
you can.” 

Howard felt profoundly uncomfortable. He had 
a strong conviction that Kingsley would resent his 
presence. Surprised the young man certainly was 
to find him there. He stood in the dining-room 
door, a slow color rising in his face. 

“ You! ” he said, as Liliha had done, but with¬ 
out even her first half-hearted cordiality. Then 
he collected himself and came forward to greet 


152 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


Philip. “ If I had known of your coming I would 
have made an effort to join you earlier,’’ he said. 
Courteous as the words were, in them rang re¬ 
proach for the women whom by speech and glance 
he ignored. 

“ We met by accident,” Philip explained. 

Liliha did not lead him back to the drawing¬ 
room as he half expected, but resigning all claim 
to him as her own guest, ceded him to Kingsley. 
She sat attentive but completely disregarded while 
Kingsley made a leisurely meal. Alice left the 
table almost at once and sat by the open window, 
silently looking out into the darkness. Not a word 
or a look passed between husband and wife 
throughout Howard’s visit. The two men bore 
the burden of the spasmodic talk. Twice, when 
Philip mentioned the names of writers known to 
them both, the painful color burned again in the 
journalist’s sullen face. 

Howard left the house that evening pitying 
Kingsley more than he would have thought pos¬ 
sible an hour before. The man despised himself 
for the bargain he had made. He knew that he 
had set his feet on the road that led to further 
debasement, to the loss of the talent that had lent 
meaning to his life. Philip sighed, but succeeding 
thoughts hardened his heart against the adven¬ 
turer. Not alone the youth in Alice, but some vital 
principle in Liliha — self-love, mother-love, love 
of life itself — lay in the dust, dying by Kingsley’s 
hand. 


CHAPTER XII 


SCORN OF MEN 

“ Did she say when she would return? ” 
Howard glanced up at his secretary from a note 
in his hand. 

“ Some time this afternoon. She didn’t men¬ 
tion the hour.” 

“ Hm! ” said Howard thoughtfully. “ All 
right, Sessions, show her in at once when she 
comes. I’ll be here until four.” 

As the young man closed the office door behind 
him Philip’s eyes ran over the note again. It 
was scribbled on his own stationery and had been 
handed to him sealed. 

“ I want to see you on business,” it began 
abruptly without prefix. “ Will return this aft¬ 
ernoon. I will send in my name as Mrs. Heath. 
Please do not mention the name Haddon to any 
one. Liliha.” 

Philip tore up the note and went to the window. 
His office was on the top floor of the Crocker Build¬ 
ing and commanded a much-loved view of San 
Francisco Bay. He took his perplexities always 
to that window; before it he had pondered many 
a brief. Anything worth while, he told himself, 
ought to have the sweep of the sky in it. For him 


154 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


at least only narrow, short-sighted conclusions 
were arrived at within the constraint of four walls. 

As he stood there now he was not seeing the 
stream of street cars and wagons and pedestrians 
on Market Street, nor the blue of the bay, nor the 
brown hills beyond. He was back in an apartment 
on the Avenue Carnot. He had thought of that 
evening often enough since he had left Liliha 
there, especially during the trying period when 
questions arising from Tom’s tangled affairs had 
turned his mind back necessarily into the past. 
Until some three months ago the Liliha of the old 
days had perhaps held his thoughts more often 
than the hollow-eyed woman in Paris. But ever 
since he had read the shocking news of the death 
of both the Kingsleys in a motor accident on the 
Riviera he had been haunted by his last encounter 
with her. He had not heard from her, not even in 
response to the letter he had written. The door 
opened to Sessions’ light preliminary knock. 

“ Mrs. Heath, sir,” the secretary said, admitting 
a heavily veiled woman in mourning. Philip came 
forward to meet her. The door closed. 

“ Incognito, Liliha!” he said, smiling as he 
held out his hand. 

“ Yes,” she said somberly. He remembered 
that with him Liliha never had felt called upon to 
answer smile with smile when she was not amused. 
“ I don’t want any one to know I’m here. I’m 
registered at the Palace as Mrs. Heath.” 

Mrs. Heath? The mystery could wait, however. 
There was something he must say to her first. He 


MERIDIAN 


155 


took her hand in both of his. u I was so terribly 
shocked to hear of that accident, Liliha. I wrote 
you-’ 9 

She drew her hand away and threw back her 
veil. “ It wasn’t an accident,” she said quietly 
and sat down in his client’s chair. 

With horror gripping him he gazed into her 
worn face. 

“ Not an accident? ” 

“ No. Alice drove over that cliff on purpose. I 
know just as well as if she had told me so herself.” 

4 ‘ But her own child — her husband! Liliha, 
don’t let such an idea take possession of you. 
What possible proof-” 

“ Proof! A lawyer’s word. It’s because the 
child was with her that I know. Alice didn’t want 
to live. She didn’t want her baby to live. But 
the women of my family are a hardy lot. We 
aren’t easy to kill. So she ended things for her¬ 
self. Given desperation and a motor on the Grande 

Comiche-’ ’ she finished the phrase with a 

gesture. 

Philip walked over to the window. Even in the 
moment of his first recoil, subconsciously his mind 
had accepted the truth of Liliha’s conviction. That 
was the sort of thing that, goaded to desperation, 
ungoverned little madcap Alice might have been 
expected to do. To carry both husband and child 
with her! Horror surged over him again. 

He controlled himself and came back to sit at 
his desk. 

11 I think she meant to do it when she left me 





156 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


that morning. It wasn’t a sudden impulse. I 
might have guessed. It wasn’t like her to kiss 
me good-by.” Liliha spoke without apparent 
emotion. From the first her voice had been calm 
and even. Was the fire all burned out in her, 
Philip wondered. She might have been an old 
woman recalling a far-away tragedy of her youth. 

“ The papers here said that the baby escaped 
without injury. Was that true? ” 

“ Yes — without serious injury. Scratches, 
bruises, of course. But she must have been throwm 
out just as the car lurched from the road. It’s on 
her account I’m here. I w r ant you to see her be¬ 
fore I begin on what I’ve come to say.” 

“ The baby is here? ” 

“ In the outer office with the nurse. Will you 
have her come in? ” 

Liliha went to meet the nurse at the door and 
took the baby from her arms. “ Leave Helen with 
me, Emma,” she said. “ You can go back to the 
hotel.” 

“ Yes, Mrs. Heath,” answered the maid. As 
she went out Howard looked at Liliha with a 
frown. It both puzzled and irritated him, her use 
of that name. 

Liliha, taking oft the baby’s cap, patted into 
order the loose tendrils of light brown hair. 
“ There! ” she said, rising to place the child on 
Howard’s knee. “ Take a good look at her, man. 
Not much'of the Kanaka about her, is there?” 

“ No, indeed,” said Philip, embarrassed. The 
child, quite unafraid, looked smilingly into his 


MERIDIAN 


157 


face. One of her hands, groping, met his finger 
and clutched it firmly. The clasp of the tiny 
fingers gave Philip a strange sensation, half pleas¬ 
ure, half pain. He did not remember to have held 
a baby thus since Richard Gregory- 

Liliha broke into a harsh laugh. 11 Don’t mince 
words, Philip Howard. Black is black and white 
is white — when you label them that way. Squeam¬ 
ishness over words is no help to me. Well, what 
do you think of her? ” 

‘‘ A fine baby, really a beautiful baby. Let me 
see, how old- 9 9 He thought to himself some¬ 

what ruefully that he did not know what con¬ 
stituted a particularly fine child. This one was 
unusually appealing with her bright unafraid 
eyes. A tender little mite whom her mother had 
tried to destroy. 

“ Going on ten months. Here, let me take her 
before she gets restless. Give me the cushion out 
of your chair. Heavens, how hard! That coat — 
give me that overcoat. . . . Now she’ll be happy 
without attention from us.” Liliha returned to 
her chair, watching the contentedly kicking baby 
in moody silence. 

“ Why have you concealed your own name. 
Liliha? 99 Howard asked, looking not at her but 
at the child. 

“ Pm coming to that. Tell me first — was that 
old confusion of names ever corrected in the San 
Francisco press? ” 

“ Confusion? ”he repeated absently, fascinated 




158 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


by the strange spectacle of a baby kicking happily 
in a corner of his office floor. 

“ The mistake in the girls’ names — the mar¬ 
riage and death notice,” she reminded him. 

“ No, never, Liliha. I know because — because 
in the report of the accident Mrs. Kingsley’s name 
was again given as Ada Haddon.” 

“ Nobody corrected it? ” 

“ No.” He remembered that paragraph. To 
the newspaper world the tragedy was a matter of 
concern mainly because of Kingsley, the journal¬ 
ist. The wife was an incident merely, mentioned 
almost as casually as the automobile — one of the 
many lives that flutter out unnoticed, every day in 
the year. 

“ Thank God! ” said Liliha. 

Howard swung his chair around to look directly 
at her. 

“ What’s in your mind, Liliha? If you want 
my help-’ ’ 

“ I do. I want you to help me bring up Helen 
in the belief that she’s Ada’s daughter, not 
Alice’s.” 

“ Why? ” he asked quietly after a pause. 

Her eyes burned angrily into his. Something 
of the old Liliha in them still! 

“ Do you have to be told that, Philip Howard? 
You’ve known three generations of us tortured by 
the same unhappiness. There’s not enough brown 
blood in that child to show in her skin or her eyes 
or her hair. But there’s enough to shadow her 
whole life. I can’t go through it again. I won’t 



MERIDIAN 159 

have another woman of my blood hear nigger 
thrown at her by a drunken brute.” 

“ Liliha-” 

“ Don’t try to tell me it’s not the same thing! ” 
she cried at him. It was a relief to have her 
break out of that stony calm. “ Brown or black, 
life for a woman of mixed blood is the same. 
We’re outcasts to the end of time.” 

Useless to tell her that the part truth in this 
was not all the truth, useless to point out that for 
these three generations the woman had chosen 
always to mate with the same heartless mold. Not 
color, perhaps, more than the hot intemperate pas¬ 
sions in all their breasts had wrought tragedy for 
the three women of this race. But as the white 
blood flowed stronger in their veins, how suffering, 
how rebellion had increased! Old Hana — the 
white man’s scorn in after years had left upon her 
little more than the pinprick of a memory. Liliha, 
had not ambition complicated her conception of 
herself, could have lived down her own bitter ex¬ 
perience, seen it fade into an unimportant shadow 
on the bright surface of an easy, pleasure-loving 
life. But Alice-His eyes brooded on the child. 

“ You have been thinking this over,” he said 
at last. “ You have some plan to suggest? Ex¬ 
plain your idea to me fully, Liliha. I’m talking 
in the dark. What bearing on this has your use 
of Heath’s name? ” 

“ I mean to have Mrs. Haddon die abroad. 
No! ” she said, answering his startled look with 
one of contempt. “ I don’t mean to kill myself. 




160 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


I’m not that sort. But I don’t intend to saddle 
Helen with Kanaka relatives. Even a mother’s 
stepmother brings it all too close.” 

“ Do you mean to separate yourself from her? ” 
44 Not entirely. I couldn’t do that. I mean to 
oe a — well, half guardian, half nurse. A sort of 
dependent of her grandmother’s, she can think me, 
— some one befriended by her long ago. Ada’s 
own mother did spend four or five years in the 
Islands, you know. Ada was born there. I want 
you to be her real guardian. Tend to the business 
and legal paid. ’ ’ 

44 I! ” he said, startled. 44 I tend to- Why 

bring me into this? Surely the lawyer for the 

Kingsleys’ estate-” 

44 As a matter of fact the estate is mine,” she 
said dryly. 4 4 Kingsley left nothing but debts. 
Alice had an income that I gave her, but no prop¬ 
erty of her own. Haddon’s estate was divided be¬ 
tween Ada and me, and she willed back to me her 
half.” 

44 I thought Alice was adopted by Haddon? ” 

44 Not legally. It made no difference to her, 
poor child. I’d have shared my last dollar with 
her. But Helen will inherit everything from me; 
she gets nothing from her mother.” 

44 Had Kingsley relatives — or Haddon? ” 

44 None living now on either side.” 

44 I still don’t wholly grasp-” 

She threw back her head impatiently. 4 4 I mean 
to deed over the property to her now and then 
vanish as Mrs. Haddon for good and all.” 





MERIDIAN 161 

“ Leaving your old age to the caprice of that 
child ? ” 

“ I don’t mean to impoverish myself. There’s 
enough for both and to spare. I can set aside for 
myself what I like.” 

“ And accounts, records, documents — you seem 
to have a naive conception of an executor’s or a 
guardian’s responsibilities,” said he, dryly in his 
turn. A slow anger was rising in him that Liliha 
should presume to suggest a deception such as 
this. Even his sense of her moral limitations 
could not keep the resentment from his voice. 

She shrugged off his scruples impatiently. 
u Who’ll bother his head with all this fifteen or 
twenty years hence? I’m willing, however, to 
protect you with any kind of a signed statement 
you like, but on the distinct understanding that 
you don’t tell Helen of it before my death, nor 
alter it, unless for a mighty good reason to which 
I’ve given consent.” 

He frowned over this in silence, then said 
brusquely. 

“ You’ve got a remarkable idea of the visibility 
of the human form. How do you expect to vanish 
as one identity and yet preserve a place about 
the child as another? ” 

“ I expect to be forgotten. It’s easier than you 
think.” She put up her hands and drew back her 
bonnet. u Do I look much like the woman you 
danced with that New Year’s Eve.” 

Her hair showed broad bands of gray. The 
flesh of cheeks and neck had sagged into loose 


162 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


flabby lines. From superb maturity she had passed 
into haggard middle age. He himself had aged 
during this time, but not in body, like this. He 
was conscious mainly of an added dryness, a bit¬ 
terness, perhaps, in the quality of his mind. Life 
still held activity, however, promise even. But 
Liliha, — what was left to her in the withering of 
her gorgeous womanhood? 

She answered his half-shocked, half-pitying look 
with a shrug and a hard smile. “ The queer part 
is that I don’t mind — now. It was bad enough 
at first — just after that New Year. We started 
for Paris the very next day. And the first time 
we went to the Opera we met some one who had 
been at the Mare Vista that night. The buzzing 
that went on behind the fans! I might have stuck 
it out, fought it down, but Ada was taken sick just 
then and before I got to going out again things 
were going badly for Alice. And then I didn’t 
care.” 

She settled her black bonnet more carefully back 
on her head and looked down at the baby on the 
floor. “ We Island women go off quickly when 
we begin to fade. You hardly knew me yourself 
at first in Paris, Philip Howard. And even when 
you recognized me I wasn’t Liliha to you. You 
spoke to me differently. I knew that night that 
I’d really grown old. Well, so much the better for 
Helen. In ten years from now you could pass 
me without knowing me at all. The thing is easy 
enough. Six or seven years in a French provincial 
village until Helen is ready for school — after 


MERIDIAN 163 

that a veil when I go out. Vanish! That’s the 
easiest part.” 

He found his thoughts drifting away from 
Liliha. Behind his deep concern for her another 
emotion, born of his new perception of the grow¬ 
ing weight of years, hammered incessantly for 
recognition. Had his own baby lived he might now 
have a grandchild of his own. 

With an effort he raised his blurred look from 
the baby to Liliha’s face, saying, after a brief 
silence: 

“ The price is too high, Liliha. You shouldn’t 
exile yourself from your friends.” 

“ Friends! ” she burst out, but he held up a 
restraining hand. 

“ Let me finish. You’re too overwrought now 
to see this thing in true perspective. The associa¬ 
tions of ten years or more are not to be thrown 
away with so careless a hand. Think this over for 
a year and you’ll realize that you’re planning a 
needless sacrifice for a very problematical gain. 
With the child herself the straight obvious course 
is best. Bring her up as your own grandchild, 
something to live for in your old age-” 

“ Another marriage like her mother’s, perhaps. 
I’d rather kill her with my own hands. Associa¬ 
tions ! Do you know what the last ten years mean 
to me? A groping for something always out of 
reach. My mind is as white as yours, Philip 
Howard, but because there’s dark blood in my 
body my 4 associates ’ think I must be different. 
And they end by making me so. "Why do you think 



164 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


I let go on New Year’s Eve? Because those 
trumpery women despised me? No! Why did 
Alice kill herself? Not alone because her hus¬ 
band despised her. Her reason was mine: we’d 
learned to despise ourselves. You can’t hold on 
to self-respect forever. You tell yourself that 
dark blood doesn’t mean inferiority. You fight 
that idea with all your strength. And suddenly 
it gets you. You give up. You know that there’s 
something back of an instinct that’s rooted so 
deep. And you’re helpless then. You’re gone. 
Helen mustn't know! That’s the only thing I want 
in the world. I want one woman with my blood in 
her to grow up without knowing what it is to lose 
her self-respect.” 

There fell a long silence. Philip was stirred as 
he had been by the touch of the baby hand. The 
years-old power of this woman to quicken elemen¬ 
tal emotion was with her still. In the egoism of 
her young beauty all her impulses, all her normal 
conceptions, had had as their focus herself. Now 
self was laid aside. The vanished beauty was 
transmuted into a finer essence. The soul had 
flowered above the withered plant. 

But what did Liliha’s abnegation demand of 
him? Philip’s whole mind revolted from the 
thought. What was sacrifice in Liliha, nobility of 
purpose, for him meant only black deceit. 

“ Why — why unearth the name of Heath? ” he 
demanded suddenly, arousing himself with an im¬ 
patient lift of the shoulders. “ There are people 


MERIDIAN 165 

living in whose minds that identifies you at once 
as Liliha Knight.’’ 

“ Let it. That wouldn’t connect me with 
Haddon in any one’s mind but yours. I married 
him as Lillian Browne — I thought Lillian 
sounded more white, ’ ’ she explained with a flicker 
of self-mockery. “ All the estate papers are 
written and signed that way — Lillian Browne 
Haddon.” 

“ But what right had you to that name? ” he 
exclaimed, professionally aghast. 

“ As much to that as to any other. Until I mar¬ 
ried Haddon I suppose I had no right to any 
name.” 

The simple truth of this was like a blow to him. 
Liliha accepted it calmly enough, but to him it was 
an arraignment of civilization and civilized man¬ 
kind. 

He put aside for the moment the possible invali¬ 
dation of even that right by her use of a feigned 
name. If Haddon’s family was extinct with Ada, 
as he supposed, then no question concerning his 
marriage was ever likely to arise. He made a 
mental note to probe Minnie. She had Island 
genealogies at her finger ends. 

‘‘ There is one other person who would connect 
the names,” Liliha said with a little frown. “ Tom 
Gregory.” 

Philip’s hand closed in a quick grip over the arm 
of his chair. “ Haven’t you heard? ” he asked 
quietly. 44 Tom Gregory died last spring.” 


166 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


Liliha’s look of mute sympathy almost un¬ 
manned him. In it, for the first time that day, he 
could fully link up this woman with the vanished 
Liliha of his early dreams. For the moment he 
had a passionate wish that life could have ended 
for them all with that vibrant episode of the past. 
Life should be like a drama, ending decently at its 
apex, not stretching out meaninglessly throughout 
empty or torturing years. 

“ Where’s Tom’s boy? ” asked Liliha in a low 
tone. 

“ In the East at school.” Philip turned a pic¬ 
ture frame that stood on his desk. 

Liliha held out her hand for it, studied it with 
a rather grim look. “ Are you his guardian? ” 

“ Yes.” 

She pushed the photograph from her with a 
resentful movement. “ Why shouldn’t you be 
guardian, then, for my baby? ” 

“ It isn’t the guardianship,” he said shortly. 
“ I don’t like — deception. I don’t believe it ever 
pays to suppress the truth.” 

“ Deception! ” she echoed with contempt. 
“ Truth! What’s truth? The latest lie! Mrs. 
Adams had one truth, Mr. Crabbe another, Father 
Rochambeau-’ ’ 

“ I’m not talking theology, Liliha, but plain 
honesty.” 

“ And I’m talking plain common sense. Would 
it harm any one living or dead for that child to 
believe herself Ada’s daughter? ” 



MERIDIAN 


167 


“ How do I know? I can’t look ahead.” He 
laughed shortly. u The harm doesn’t worry me 
half as much as the lies — I hate lies'.” 

“ You wouldn’t have to tell any,” Liliha looked 
her scorn for his squeamishness. “ That’s my 
part. You execute the trusts or deeds or what¬ 
ever the things are called, for me — living. I’ll 
manage to circulate the news of my death. No¬ 
body’s going to question this. You forget that no 
one has the least interest in what becomes of me.” 

‘‘ The child herself, ’ ’ he said quietly. 4 ‘ There ’ll 
come a day when she ’ll ask questions^ Liliha. ’ ’ 

Liliha’s smile held no mirth. u Children don’t 
worry much over living parents, much less over 
those who are dead. I have a visit to make to a 
newspaper office this afternoon — to find two clip¬ 
pings. With them and a wedding dress and a 
photograph or two, questions will answer them¬ 
selves.” 

She glanced sharply at him as he sat, his lowered 
head on his hand, looking moodily at the child on 
the floor. Suddenly she went over to Helen and 
lifting her, deposited her in his arms. This time 
the baby smiled at him. 

“ She’s a friendly little soul,” he said, with a 
shaken laugh. 

Liliha’s lips tightened. 4 4 So her mother used 
to be. You may remember what she was that 
night in Paris. If you thought you could help to 
keep the look she wears now on Helen’s face, 
would a few lies count for much with you, Philip 
Howard? ” 


168 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


He laid his lean cheek for an instant against the 
baby’s soft rosy face, then gave her back into 
Liliha’s arms. He turned away to the window. 

“ I’ll think it over,” he said, not knowing that 
the child hunger in him had already worked her 
will. 


PART THREE 


CREPUSCULE (1920) 





CHAPTER XIII 


THE RISING GENERATION 

“ If both ladies are out, Emma, I had better let 
my man take me back to San Rafael for the night.’’ 
Philip Howard turned to look undecidedly at the 
taxi driver standing on the steps behind him. 

“ Indeed, sir, Mrs. Heath’d be right put out if 
I let you go,” said the maid, with a decision born 
of long knowledge of this guest’s standing in the 
household. She stepped out into the foggy dark¬ 
ness and reaching her hand for Howard’s bag, 
signaled the driver his dismissal. “ You were 
expected to-morrow, Mr. Howard, I know. And 
with Miss Helen only a step away — I’ll call up 
Mrs. Durbrow’s and she’ll be over in no time.” 

“ I don’t want to spoil her evening,” Howard 
demurred, stepping inside the door nevertheless. 
He unwound a muffler from his neck and shrugging 
himself free from his greatcoat resigned it to the 
maid. u This isn’t her first meeting with Miss 
Sue since your return? ” 

“ Dear me, no, sir! ” Emma ushered him across 
the wide hall to the living-room. “ Five meals 
they’ve had together in these three days.” 

“ They’ve skimmed the cream of the year’s 
separation then,” he agreed. “ Very well, Emma, 


172 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


Tell her I’m here, hut not to hurry home on my 
account. ’ ’ 

“ You’ll have dinner, sir? ” 

“ Thanks — no. I dined at the hotel.” 

The maid left the room and Howard turned to 
the fire, holding chilly hands to the blaze. At once 
his eye was caught by a small bronze medallion 
on the mantelshelf. He picked it up; an exquisite 
bit of French workmanship. Abel Lafleur, eh? 
Low relief — two bathers on the brink of a pool. 
His mind flashed back to an ocean cove at dawn. 
Smiling, he put the medallion back in its place. 
Not one of Liliha’s travel trophies, this! Liliha, 
nothing if not moral in her later years, frowned 
on the nude in art. Helen’s choice, therefore. 
Philip approved her taste. But to find the thing 
displayed in so prominent a place- 

“ Hm! ” said Philip, and clasping hands behind 
him, moved to stand with his back to the fire. His 
eyes roved curiously over the beautifully propor¬ 
tioned old room. No other increment visible; not 
unpacked yet, probably. Liliha’s souvenirs of 
Europe not infrequently arrived by freight. He 
glanced distastefully at the costly pottery, the de¬ 
cently clothed bronzes, the elaborate embroideries; 
pity the room had not been left in its earlier style. 
Pompous it had been, of course, like all old man¬ 
sions of the seventies, with high ceilings and crys¬ 
tal chandeliers and endless mirrors, suiting 
Liliha’s taste for gilded magnificence; but even 
so it had had a distinction that it now lacked. 
Liliha’s home, he had always termed it to himself, 



CREPUSCULE 


173 


though Helen was nominally mistress here, Liliha 
only a sublimated form of housekeeper. House¬ 
keeper, indeed! Dowager empress was more like 
the fact. 

Philip shrugged. He sauntered to a window, 
lifting the curtain and staring out into the murky 
blackness. Nothing could be seen to-night of the 
old formal garden that he loved, outrageous foun¬ 
tain, moss-grown statuary and all. He began to 
pace slowly up and down the room. Liliha had 
done well in this place that she had chanced upon 
in her search for seclusion long ago. Tucked away 
in a valley of Marin County, accessible to San 
Francisco and yet with a milder climate than the 
city she detested. Helen, of course, had been too 
young then to have been consulted in the choice. 
He stopped to frown at the medallion, the only 
imprint of the girPs personality the room bore. 
Had he been right in thinking he detected a caustic 
overtone in some of the allusions to Liliha Helen’s 
recent letters had contained! 

A door slammed. He heard a low-pitched young 
voice raised in question, heard the quick tap of 
high heels across a polished floor. And then a 
pink whirlwind burst into the room and enveloped 
him. He bent down to the girl, — a little thing 
hardly up to his shoulder. The cool freshness of 
the spring fog breathed from her cheek and hair. 

After clinging to him a moment without speak¬ 
ing she released him with an ecstatic squeeze of 
his arm. 

“ What luck! ” she cried. “ Mammy Lil went 


174 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


to San Rafael to church and I’ll have my first 
crack at you alone.” 

“ Oh, my dear! ” said he instantly. “ You’ve 
cut your hair! ” 

She shook the brown curls, half in deprecation, 
half defiantly. “ Don’t rag me about it, uncle 
dearest! I’m just through one war with Mammy 
Lil. All the girls cut their hair. You’ll like me, 
really you will, when you recover from the first 
shock. ’ ’ 

“ Modern improvements! ” said he grudgingly. 
“ What else? You don’t smoke, do you! ” He 
was annoyed to find himself unable to make the 
question sound as careless as he wished. 

“ Only among my contemporaries,” she assured 
him with an oblique glance. Suddenly she giggled. 
“ You goose! Of course I don’t. Would if I 
wanted to, but my mouth’s too big, worse luck. 
Only cupid’s-bow girls ought to try it — Sue’s a 
dream! ” 

He gave her a sharp glance. “ Little minx! ” 
he said, inwardly delighted to find her faculty for 
seeing through and getting the better of him unim¬ 
paired. He crossed to the fireplace and sank into 
a leather chair, leaning his white head rather 
languidly against the cushion and giving himself 
up to the warmth and ease so welcome after his 
long day of chilly driving. Helen, suddenly a bit 
grave, he thought, followed and perched on the 
arm of his chair. His hand covered hers. He 
glanced up at the mantelshelf. 


CREPUSCULE 175 

“ Charming thing, that medallion,” he said 
casually. “ Pick it up yourself, Helen? ” 

“ Yes/’ she answered, with a moody glance at 
him. “ Good place for it, don’t you think? I 
chose that too.” Her lips closed in a tight line. 

He checked a question. Better to let her take 
her own time. 

“ So Mrs. Heath’s at church,” he prompted, 
after a pause. 

“ Yes.” Helen slipped to a low fender stool 
at his side upon which she drooped, bare arms 
clasped about her knees, her head turned from him 
as she gazed into the flames. 

His eyes dwelt on her averted face. In appear¬ 
ance she still looked younger to him than her nine¬ 
teen years. That was perhaps due to the prevail¬ 
ing style in dress. Her short-skirted gown of soft 
rose-colored silk was fashioned like that of a little 
girl. He was thankful that the child was so ap¬ 
parent in her still. He had no wish to see her 
slip away into womanhood, into a life and indi¬ 
viduality of her own. Yet that was what he had 
tacitly consented to when he had allowed Liliha 
to carry her off abroad. 

Her continued silence troubled him. Something, 
evidently, was on the child’s mind. 44 Well — and 
your adventures, Helen? ” he asked lightly. 
“ Your letters were enthusiastic, indeed, but 
neither frequent, nor what one might call con¬ 
secutive. ’ ’ 

As she glanced smilingly up at him he thought 
that her eyes were her best feature, — clear, can- 


176 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

did, intelligent. A rather odd, square face. The 
nose, lacking delicacy perhaps, imparted strength. 
Quaint and charming she was, if not beautiful, 
aside from the appealing beauty of youth. 

“ I am a scrappy writer,” she admitted. “ Of 
course I ’ll tell you — but not now. I don’t get you 
to myself any too often, and there’s something — 
rather important — I want to talk to you about.” 
“ Tell me,” he said with instant seriousness. 
She seemed to grope for a beginning. 

“ Uncle Phil! ” she said abruptly after a pause. 
“ How do I come to have so much money? ” 

“ That’s going a long way back, Helen,” he 
answered, conscious of a secret anxiety whither 
the question might lead and choosing his words 
carefully. “ Your grandmother deeded you a 
large estate.” 

“ How did she get it? ” 

“ Her husband inherited it from an uncle — a 
sugar planter who had been a missionary in early 
days. It was one of those immense land grants 
that have grown so valuable in latter years. ’ ’ 

“ It wasn’t valuable when my great-great-uncle, 
or whatever he was, got it? ” 

At her mention of the relationship the slow color 
rose in Howard’s face and his nervous fingers 
tapped the arm of his chair. “ I don’t say that. 
Even when I first saw Mr. Haddon, forty years 
ago, he was a wealthy man — as wealth went then. 
We’d rate him differently to-day, perhaps.” 
Philip had a flicker of amusement, remembering 
how his own fortune, which once had been impos- 


CREPUSCULE 


177 


ing, had shrunk to insignificance beside that of the 
woman whom in his young magnificence he had of¬ 
fered to educate. 

‘ 1 How did it happen that my income swelled so 
last year? ” she demanded. Her curiosity puzzled 
him. She had hitherto shown little interest in 
money affairs. 

“ Mainly because sugar commanded so high a 
price, partly because for the first time in years 
Haina-Haina has a really capable manager on the 
ground.’ ’ 

Her intent look at him increased his uneasiness. 

* i Ought I to have so much ? ’ 9 she asked. 

“ Ought? What do you mean, Helen? 99 

1 ‘ I meant — oh, spending huge sums of money 
when I don’t even know how they come to me.” 

“ So you’re a little socialist! ” he said, relieved 
and amused. 

“I’m not! ” she flashed back at him. “It’s 
horrid of you to laugh.” Relenting, she laughed at 
her own heat. “ I don’t care — would you like it 
yourself, thinking perhaps you might be an op¬ 
pressor of the poor? ” 

“ Small danger of that with Richard round! ” 
said he, a bit grimly. “ He’s a humanitarian — 
where the poor workman is concerned. He doesn’t 
care how hardly he uses us. I haven’t the princely 
riches that you complain of, young woman. It 
cost me a year’s income to institute his reforms.” 

“ Who’s Richard? ” she asked, eyes again on 
the flames. 

“ Manager of your plantation, and mine. In- 


178 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

cidentally, my cousin, as you ought to remember. ’ ■ 

4 ‘What! Richard Gregory of the Princess 
Pat ’s! Just a manager! ’ ’ Disillusionment rang 
in the cry. 

“ That same Richard,’’ he admitted, smiling. 
‘ ‘ And glad enough to exchange swashbuckling for 
a job, like all the rest.” 

“ Swashbuckling! ” the girl reproached him. 
“A man with the Victoria Cross! Oh, I know you 
didn’t tell me. I read about it myself. You don’t 
half deserve a hero of your own, Uncle Phil. You 
never brag of him at all. ’ ’ 

“ No,” he said, brooding eyes on the fire. He 
could hardly have explained to himself the dis¬ 
inclination he had always felt to bring these two 
wards of his together, even in thought. Perhaps 
their complete separation in his mind had been 
due in the beginning to Liliha’s fierce jealousy of 
Tom’s boy, to Minnie’s bitter tongue. When Min¬ 
nie, after the report of Liliha’s death had set 
tongues wagging, had learned that he had accepted 
the guardianship of the Kingsley child, she had 
badgered him incessantly about his supposed early 
liaison with the dead grandmother. Her innuendo 
had annoyed him so much that he had been almost 
glad that Liliha had decided to live abroad, where 
his yearly visits to the child, with whom he always 
contrived to spend several weeks of the time sup¬ 
posed to be devoted to travel, never were called 
to Minnie’s attention. Not until after his cousin’s 
death, when Helen was about seven years old, had 
he urged Liliha to make California her home. 


CREPUSCULE 179 

Richard had been in Cornell then, and the lives of 
his two charges had never since touched. Philip’s 
thoughts flashed for a moment to the boy whom, 
ever since Tom’s death, he had regarded as his 
adopted son. Owing to Richard’s early enlistment 
in the Canadian army and his long service over¬ 
seas, Philip himself had seen him only at rare in¬ 
tervals during the last five years. 

Realizing suddenly Helen’s deep preoccupation, 
Philip's mind returned to the girl. Again he 
checked a question. No need to derail her by his 
impatience. Evidently, from her frowning con¬ 
centration, she was getting ready to present her 
“ important ” case. He smiled to himself over 
the word, remembering the last dilemma she had 
confided to him, a year ago: an overdrawn bank 
account and a mortal dread of what the offended 
bank meant to do about it. His eyes rested now 
rather disapprovingly on the costly fabric of her 
dress. He had never endorsed Liliha’s extrava¬ 
gance, or approved her allowing Helen so much 
pin money; but the spending of the constantly in¬ 
creasing income, his management of the estate 
produced, was one of many details of the anom¬ 
alous household with which he felt he had no right 
to interfere. 

After all, he consoled himself, the child was 
singularly little spoiled. A level-headed little body 
on the whole, generous, capriciously tender to the 
adopted uncle whom, he ruefully realized, she sel¬ 
dom failed to keep securely in her pocket. At any 
rate she ruled with laughter; that was to the good. 


180 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


After his long experience with Liliha’s somber 
tenacity, Helen’s gay insistence on her mastery 
over him was delightful, a relief. He liked, too, 
her way of wearing her enthusiasms lightly. The 
flare of half-ironic hero worship apparent in her 
reference to Richard was characteristic. He had 
formerly thought that this mocking lightness of 
hers was a trick she had caught from himself. 
More likely it was a mannerism of the times, an¬ 
other instance of the baffling habit prevalent 
among youngsters nowadays of keeping always on 
the surface of things. It crossed his mind that 
in all his intimate contact with her girlhood the 
few words just passed about her income were per¬ 
haps his nearest approach to discussing with her 
a moral issue that regarded herself. She had not 
been without ethical guidance, of course, with 
Liliha at her elbow! He had a jealous belief, 
nevertheless, that his own silent influence had been 
more potent than all of Liliha’s precepts. 

Indeed, he thought it was rather strange, con¬ 
sidering Liliha’s dominance of the girl, how little 
of her own strong individuality she had stamped 
upon Helen. The child’s low, resonant voice some¬ 
times brought the young Liliha almost startlingly 
before him, but not only was there no physical like¬ 
ness apparent between them, Helen seemed to 
him utterly different in character and tempera¬ 
ment. Where she was all boyish frankness, for ex¬ 
ample, Liliha had been feminine guile. The possi¬ 
bility struck him suddenly that this too might be a 
mannerism of modern girlhood, the fundamental 


CREPUSCULE 181 

difference between them less great than he had 
supposed. Smiling to himself, he admitted that 
whatever the variation in method might be, the 
younger generation assuredly exerted a like power 
over him with the old. 

At this point in his reflections Helen lifted her 
head and broke the prolonged silence. 

“ I’m glad after all that he’s the manager,” she 
said. “ It won’t matter any more that you’re so 
stingy with your Richard Gregory. I shall see him 
next month for myself.” 

“ He’s in the Islands,” Howard said. “ He 
isn’t coming here, child.” 

‘‘ I know that. But I’m going there next month 
— to the Islands.” 

“ No, no! ” he said. His taut body expressed 
his mind’s recoil before the thought. 

“ Why not? ” 

Even under the girl’s look of surprise he could 
not immediately recall his composure. Blindly 
he gazed back at her. He had no reason, only a 
dread, deeper than reason, to have this girl drawn 
into the Island life. He passed a troubled hand 
over his eyes, brushing away the confused 
thoughts that held him silently before her ques¬ 
tioning gaze. 

“ No reason! ” he said, with a short laugh. 
“ An old man’s jealousy, perhaps; his regret to 
find that his regency is past.” 

The girl’s hand caught his and held it to her 
cheek. “ Not that,” she said. “ Your regency 
isn’t over — it never will be. And I won’t have 


182 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


you call yourself old. Nothing’s old about you ex¬ 
cept your white hair.” She laughed up at him. 
“ And you know you’re proud of that yourself — 
know as well as I do how distinguished it makes 
you look! But,” she added after a pause. “ I’m 
getting old too — so old that I don’t want to be 
told things. I want to know things and do them, 
on my own.” 

He reminded himself that he had always known 
that the day might come when she would not rest 
without knowledge of what concerned herself. Be¬ 
hind his dread of what her growing intelligence 
might demand of him, of what he might be called 
upon to divulge or to conceal, subconsciously he 
was proud of her, delighted to find in her a dawn¬ 
ing perception of her own relation to the larger 
world of affairs and men. The Victorian woman’s 
vagueness in business, which often was sympto¬ 
matic of a vagueness toward life itself, had always 
annoyed him. Even Liliha, he thought with a hint 
of derogation, for all her keen eye for balance 
sheets, never concerned herself in the least with 
the details of how that balance was achieved. 
Liliha- 

“ What does Mrs. Heath say to this idea of 
yours — going to the Islands? ” he asked 
abruptly. 

Helen released his hand. “ I haven’t told her,” 
she said, with a defiant lift of her head. 

“ She may not approve.” 

“ She doesn’t have to,” responded Helen coldly. 



CREPUSCULE 


183 


“ This concerns me, not her. But don’t you 
worry,” she added, “ she’ll go.” 

“ She hates the Islands, my dear. Hasn’t been 
near them for thirty years or more.” 

Helen laughed and shrugged. 4 ‘ Much you know 
about it! She loves them. Has been crazy to get 
back ever since we came to California.” 

“ Nonsense, child! ” he said sharply. 

‘ ‘ Oh, but I know! Why, she brought me up on 
the Islands — fed me on stories of chiefs and 
menehunas and kahunas as Sue’s old darky 
mammy fed her on Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox.” 

“ Helen! ” he exclaimed. “ For heaven’s sake 
don’t say that! ” Darky mammy! The words — 
appalling words in their unconscious revelation 
of Liliha’s true position in Helen’s mind — fell 
like a flail over and over upon his shocked soul. 

She turned to look at him in wonder. “ Say 
what? Aren’t you well, uncle? You’re awfully 
jumpy to-night. ’ ’ 

Controlling himself with difficulty he said, 
sternly for him, “ It — pained me to hear you 
speak of Mrs. Heath in that way. To compare 
a woman who has given you a mother’s devotion 
to a darky mammy is — unworthy of you, Helen. ’ ’ 

“ I didn’t! ” she cried, revolted in her turn. 
‘ ‘ I didn’t mean it that way! Do you think I don’t 
know what I owe her? I ought to,” she added, 
suddenly resentful; “ she reminds me often 
enough. Oh, I know I’m a beast! ” she cried in 
quick contrition. “ But if only she wasn’t so 
dreadfully fond of me! ” 


184 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

Philip’s heart stood still. “ Aren’t you fond of 
her? ” he asked gravely after a pause. “ I have 
always supposed so.” 

The girl’s eyes tilled with tears. “ I — I sup¬ 
pose I ought to be. But she’s so exacting, so — 
possessing! Nobody but a relative has a right to 
hang on to another as she does to me.” 

Howard rose to pace the floor. ‘* She’s hit it! ” 
he said to himself. “ Right in the bull’s-eye. No¬ 
body but a relative has that right. ’ ’ 

The girl on the fender stool fumbled in her short 
sleeve for a handkerchief, sniffed, and dried her 
eyes. “ It’s got to stop! ” she said rebelliously. 
“ It’s a fight every time I want to do anything on 
my own. I’m no longer a child to take orders from 
her. I’m tired of scrapping over every trifle. It’s 
a good time right now to make a change. I’m go¬ 
ing to the Islands. Let her try to stop me. I’ll 
tell her where to get off!” She repented again. 
u Uncle Phil, I know I’m a little beast.” 

“ Poor child! ” he said. “ And I never 
guessed.” He sat down beside her and put his 
hand on her shoulder. “ I haven’t it in my heart 
to blame you. I’m too sorry — too desperately 
sorry for you both. Sorriest for her, perhaps. 
Life’s all ahead of you, my dear, but she has only 
her past. And you’ve filled it, Helen, for nearly 
twenty years. Don’t forget that. ’ ’ 

Helen stiffened. She drew out from under his 
hand. “ Don’t you think people ought to fill their 
own lives, not spill over into others? You have 
to stand it with relations, I suppose. In outsiders 


CREPUSCULE 


185 


it’s rather like — impertinence. I don ’t mean you, 
uncle dearest! ’’ she amended quickly. “ You’re 
perfect. You never butt in. She does. If only I 
had relatives! ” she said under her breath. 
“ Some one who really belonged to me. At times 
I feel so alone.” 

“ Poor child! ” he said again. 

Suddenly she turned to him, laying both arms 
across his knees. Her mood, he saw, had in a mo¬ 
ment completely changed. “ Stories about one’s 
ancestors are next best to the ancestors them¬ 
selves,” she said gayly. “ Suppose you break the 
silence of ages and tell me a little about mine. Tell 
me about my mother and father first. Hid you 
know them both well? ” 

“ Your father, fairly well. Your mother I only 
saw twice,” he said baldly. 

“ It was my grandmother.you knew best, wasn’t 
it? ” A new piquancy of interest in the brown 
eyes quickened his latent uneasiness. 

“ Yes,” he said. 

“ She was a Southerner, Mammy Lil says, a 
howling beauty and a belle. I’ve always meant to 
do her credit.” She leaned back and tilted her 
face into better view. “ Do I? Am I as beautiful 
as she? ” 

Hot color flooded into his lean face. Liliha’s 
easy perversions of fact always shocked and an¬ 
gered him. Equivocal though his own position 
might be, he had never told the girl a lie about her¬ 
self. “ I can’t discuss your grandmother with 
you, my dear,” he said testily. 


186 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


The girl nodded her head slowly as if satisfied. 
“ You’re blushing! ” she accused him. “ And 
I’ve put my finger on the dark spot in your past. 
Which one? The important one, of course! My 
grandmother was an old sweetheart of yours! ” 

“ Stuff and nonsense, Helen! Absurd! ” 

She grinned at him, the gamin in her charming 
him as always. “ No use denying it — I’ve sus¬ 
pected you for years. I’m going to pump Mammy 
Lil. ’ ’ 

“ For heaven’s sake — no, child! ” he protested. 

Helen burst into a ringing laugh. ‘ 4 I have you 
now where I want you — right under my thumb. ’ ’ 

“ As if that were anything new! ” he grumbled. 

4 ‘ Well — if I hold my tongue about this will 
you back me up on going to the Islands — back me 
up strong? ” she bargained. 

“ Secret diplomacy! ” said he, with a sense of 
reprieve. ‘ 4 Helen, I’m ashamed of your methods. 
You’re no sport. I had decided, anyway, that it is 
better for you to go.” 

Helen hummed a skeptical little tune, full of 
malicious satisfaction. At that moment a motor 
drew up before the door. She sat up straighter 
on her stool. 

“ Mammy Lil back from church.” She looked 
up at him silently, the little frown again puckering 
her forehead. u I — we don’t have to start any¬ 
thing to-night! ’ ’ she said hurriedly. 

Howard gave an irrepressible chuckle, but had 
no time in his turn to express malicious enjoy¬ 
ment before Liliha entered the room. He rose to 


CREPUSCULE 


187 


meet her with the little stir of expectancy with 
which his pulses always heralded her coming. He 
was instantly aware that she was displeased to find 
them together alone. 

She relinquished his hand after a brief contact 
and sat heavily down in a chair at some little dis¬ 
tance from the fire. As his eyes rested on her, a 
complacent satisfaction in having preserved the 
lean vigor of his own youth stirred in Philip’s 
consciousness. 

Liliha threw back her veil and loosened her furs. 

“ This is a surprise,” she said coldly. “ If 
Helen had told me that she expected you to-night 
I should have stayed home from church too.” 

“ Helen was as surprised as you,” he said 
hastily in her defense. “ A friend passing through 
Fort Bragg in his car to-day furnished a welcome 
means of getting back many hours ahead of my 
scheduled time. I tried in vain to telephone you 
from San Rafael before coming out to-night. It is 
trespassing on your hospitality, I know-” 

Liliha majestically waved this aspect of his ex¬ 
cuse aside. With mingled amusement and annoy¬ 
ance Howard realized that she did not believe him. 
It was one of the drawbacks of an easy mendacity, 
he reflected, that it rendered one unable to recog¬ 
nize the truth. 

“You are always welcome; you know that,” 
Liliha said. “ Helen, however, is not always 
thoughtful about the little comforts of our guests. 
Which room, Helen-’ 9 

“ None at all,” she said sulkily. “You’d have 




188 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


given me the dickens if Pd chosen one without 
your advice.” 

At Howard’s quick glance at her the girl flushed. 
She rose from her stool. Philip wondered whether 
Liliha had noticed, as he had, that she had not 
risen upon the older woman’s entrance. 

Repenting now, apparently, of her brusque man¬ 
ner, she said, “ You must have reams of business 
to talk over after a year. I’m going to bed. 
Mammy Lil, can I give Emma any message for 
you about the room? ” 

Liliha, rising, divested herself of furs, mantle 
and hat, laying each in turn across the girl’s arm. 
“ The east room as usual,” she said. “ Tell Emma 
to light the fire there at once.” 

They kissed each other good night — an impres¬ 
sive kiss on Liliha’s part, a rather perfunctory 
peck on Helen’s. Liliha then stepped across the 
room to one of the long mirrors that hung between 
the high windows to pat into order her abundant 
gray hair. 

Helen put her free arm around Howard’s neck. 
“ Tell her to-night,” she whispered pleadingly. 
‘ 1 Tell her when I’m not here. ’ ’ 

The door closed. Philip, who had been standing 
behind his chair, resting an arm upon its back, 
straightened to glance at Liliha. Her eyes looked 
out into his from the glass, not provocatively as 
once, long ago, they had shone back at him, but 
blackly, — eyes smoldering with anger and dis¬ 
trust. 

“ What are you two hatching up between you? ” 


CREPUSCULE 189 

she demanded harshly, turning from the mirror to 
face him. 

He considered her in silence, — a commanding 
figure in her rich black dress, a handsome woman 
still, though massively built. Her features, it is 
true, had coarsened somewhat with the years; her 
skin had darkened. But she still carried herself 
superbly erect; still, for so heavy a woman, was 
astonishingly active and alert. 

“ How well you look, Liliha! ” he said. “No, 
I’m not evading your question. I’ll answer it 
presently. But I need time. Helen has given me 
something to think about to-night. ’ ’ 

He placed a chair for her and after two or three 
turns about the room came back to the fireplace to 
resume his own seat. 

‘ ‘ Liliha, ’ ’ he said without preface. ‘ ‘ Helen has 
made up her mind — quite without suggestion 
from me, I give you my word — to go down to 
Haina-Haina next month.” 

Liliha’s smile was not pleasant. “ She will find 
it hard to get me to consent. ’ ’ 

‘‘ I’m afraid that’s the point. She doesn’t mean 
to ask your consent — or mine,” he added hastily. 
“ She seems to feel that the time has come for her 
to make such decisions for herself.” 

“ Nonsense! I shall forbid it! ” Liliha’s foot 
beat a slow tattoo on the rug. 

“ By virtue of what authority? ” he asked 

quietly. 

She uttered an impatient exclamation. “ Au¬ 
thority ! The same I have held for twenty years! ’ ’ 


190 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


u An authority derived from Helen’s acceptance 
of it alone, Liliha. Your real authority — that of 
a grandmother — you have deliberately forsworn. 

Your usurped authority- Liliha, Helen is to 

all intents and purposes a woman now. Let me 
give you her own words concerning the obedience 
you have always exacted from her: 1 Only a rela¬ 
tive has the right.’ Are you willing to acknowl¬ 
edge the relationship? ” 

“ Never! ” she said with tightened lips. “ For 
what have I bulled myself all these years ? ’ ’ 

“ Don’t you see the anomaly of your position? ” 
he asked with growing earnestness. “ The only 
connection with Helen’s family you have acknowl¬ 
edged is almost a menial one, dependency, one 
might better say; your devotion to her you have 
explained as the repayment of an old debt of kind¬ 
ness. You have assumed, however, the same 
rights, the same standing as you would have 
claimed as her grandmother.” 

He paused. Liliha sat motionless, frowning 
heavily. 

“ The inconsistency passed with Helen while 
she was still a child,” he went on. “ It cannot 
continue to do so now. Already she resents it, is 
beginning to question, to rebel. Can’t you realize 
too, Liliha, that your continued dominance is sure 
to arouse criticism — speculation — in the world 
where you are so anxious to give Helen a place? 
You’ll defeat your own ends if talk about your 
attitude toward her becomes rife.” 

He felt that this part of his argument impressed 



CEEPUSCULE 191 

her, though she gave no outward sign. ‘ ‘ What do 
you want me to do? ” she asked in bitter resent¬ 
ment. “ Debase myself into a servant to feed the 
vanity of that child? ” 

“ By no means,” he said patiently. “ Merely 
cease to be a dictator. Become her friend instead. 
Let her try her own wings.” 

Hostility burned in her eyes. “ She’s a mere 
child still. Incapable of directing her own affairs. ’ ’ 

“ Perhaps she is.” Her immaturity, that had 
so delighted him, rose before him now as a re¬ 
proach. “ But if that’s true, it’s our own fault, 
Liliha. She’s nineteen — time any girl should 
know how to stand alone. You and Alice were 
both mothers at nineteen.” 

Her face hardened. “ And arrant fools, both 
of us. Carried off our feet by the first man who 
made love to us — both of us the same. It won’t 
be that way with Helen. Not if I have anything 
to say. I shall choose her husband myself.” 

His fingers stroked rebellious lips. He dared 
not venture a smile. “ There’s a proverb we 
might do well to remember — about leading a 
horse to water. Helen may feel entitled to a word 
or two on the subject herself. Choose the hus¬ 
band, well and good, but make sure first that he’s 
the one Helen likes. Have you any one in mind? ” 
he added in sudden alarm. 

“ No, ” she said morosely. ‘ ‘ I don’t think much 
of the boys she gets to know. There’s not one of 
them fit to tie her shoe.” 

Secretly he agreed with her. It was incompre- 


192 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


hensible that a girl like Helen should be content 
to dance and flirt with such empty-headed boys. 
Where did all the fine young men hide themselves 
these days, he wondered. Too busy with new en¬ 
terprise, he supposed, to be found hanging around 
country clubs and girls. “ Perhaps you’d find 
better material in the Islands,” he said idly, half 
to himself. “ I like the way the young men are 
taking hold there. Young Patterson, for instance, 
a rich man’s son, is working on our new irrigation 
ditch.” 

Liliha sharply raised her head. “ The Haina 
Kua Pattersons? The old doctor’s grandson? 
He’ll come in for a big property one of these days. 
Is he the new manager who’s done so well ? ’ ’ 

“ No,” he said, on the defensive. “ A much 
more capable man. It’s Richard Gregory who’s 
managing Helen’s plantation and mine.” 

He expected an explosion of anger but none 
came. Instead, Liliha’s lips curled over a scorn¬ 
ful, almost cruel smile. “ Old Kameolani’s grand¬ 
son a servant of my granddaughter; that’s fine! 
That does me a world of good! ” she said. 

“ Nothing of the kind,” he replied, nettled. 
“ Richard is as little Helen’s servant as I am.” 

Liliha paid no heed. She w T as again plunged 
into deep thought. “ I fancy I understand,” she 
said at last, her eyes resting on the medallion on 
the mantelshelf. “ To keep my influence with 
Helen, I shall have to give her more head in unim¬ 
portant things.” 

Though any continued dominance of Helen was 


CREPUSCULE 


193 


far from the idea he had in mind, he welcomed 
the concession. “ I think yon will always find 
Helen more open to suggestion than to command,” 
he said, and instantly regretted having planted the 
word in Liliha’s fertile mind. 

She nodded her head slowly. “ I see,” she said. 
“ We’ll go to the Islands.” 

He thought that her face softened with the 
words. Perhaps Helen was right in thinking that 
secretly she longed to see her birthplace again. He 
remembered Tom’s nostalgia for the Islands dur¬ 
ing his last illness, how he himself had ransacked 
San Francisco for the poi and papajas and bread¬ 
fruit that the Islander’s failing appetite craved. 
But her next speech banished this speculation. 

“ Helen can make her own plans,” she said, 
smiling rather grimly to herself. “ I ’ll make mine. 
Let me see. Young Patterson’s parents must both 
be alive. There’s a daughter too, I think, not far 
from Helen’s age.” 

He continued to watch the now silent woman as 
she sat there brooding beside the fire. Her deter¬ 
mination he knew, her strength, — a strength he 
felt he could learn to hate. Helen ought to mold 
her own life, not have it shaped for her by any 
one. But what chance had the tender offshoot of 
the child’s independence against the deep-rooted 
growth of this woman’s will? Nothing had ever 
turned her from a course she had once decided 
upon; nothing except an ungovernable passion in 
her own heart! But passion was dead in her now, 
both love and the ambition of her younger woman- 


194 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


hood. All the forces of her character were bent 
upon the destiny of this little girl whom he loved 
anxiously, jealously, as if she had been his own. 
Was it not for him to devise some means to 
strengthen the child in her new opposition to 
Liliha’s will? Some interest outside of Liliha’s 
influence. The plantation! There might be his 
chance. Liliha had never cared anything for plan¬ 
tation affairs, had clung to no authority over the 
management. If he could foster Helen’s nascent 
interest there, perhaps enlisting Richard’s aid. 

He glanced across the hearthrug to Liliha’s 
placid, dreaming face. The lust of contest rose in 
him. Liliha must not guess his opposition. He 
must mobilize his forces secretly. What if he left 
her here, apparently mistress of the field, while 
he went down to Haina-Haina in advance of her 
to look over the new battle ground. 

“ Good night, Liliha,” he said suddenly, rising. 
“I’m not as young as I once was, I find, when I’ve 
had a trying day. No, don’t bother to come up 
with me. I know the way. We’ll talk this Island 
business over with Helen in the morning. Per¬ 
haps I can engage passage for you before I sail.” 

“ Sail? ” Liliha turned on him the opacity of 
her musing eyes. 

“I’m leaving on the China Tuesday,” he said, 
wondering, as he left her there to her contempla¬ 
tion of the dying fire, how best, without her knowl¬ 
edge, to get immediate word to his office to secure 
passage for him at any cost. 


CHAPTER XIV 


GYPSY BLOOD 

Richard Gregory rolled up the map that had lain 
on the table before him, tied it, and rose to re¬ 
place it in a cabinet that stood against the office 
wall. 

“ That’s about all we need to go into to-night, 
I think, Cousin Philip,” he said, returning to the 
table. He did not sit down again but stood, one 
foot on the rung of his chair, elbow resting on his 
knee, as he lighted a cigarette. 

Howard looked up at him with a smile. “ Thank 
heaven for that! ” he said. “ Plantation affairs 
these days seem about as far-reaching and compli¬ 
cated as those of an empire. Don’t you some¬ 
times feel, Richard, that you’re holding on to the 
ends of almost as many threads as Lloyd George 
himself? ” 

A flash of white teeth was Richard’s only im¬ 
mediate response. Howard, as his companion 
stood looking musingly at the curling smoke, 
looked approvingly at him, reproaching himself 
for the old-fogyism that, earlier in the day, had 
silently criticized the informality of the young 
manager’s dress. An afternoon of driving and 
riding about the two plantations had made of his 


196 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


own linen riding suit a crushed and wilted wreck. 
Richard, on the contrary, in khaki riding trousers 
and a soft white shirt, its sleeves cut short at the 
elbow and its collarless neck turned under in a V, 
looked as fresh as at the start. Nevertheless, 
Philip thought, it might perhaps be wise to hint 
that to appear in such a costume to welcome 
visitors on Wahainalua’s dock was carrying infor¬ 
mality rather too far. He was glad that he had 
decided to precede Helen and Liliha to the Islands 
by a week or two. Had Liliha first seen Richard 
thus, she would have been more than ever con¬ 
vinced of what she chose to regard as his menial 
estate. 

Menial indeed! Resentment glowed in Philip 
anew at the idea. A fine head, a personality mag¬ 
netic, forceful, distinct. For the hundredth time 
Philip scanned young Gregory for some likeness 
to Tom. He could not perceive a trace of his old 
friend either in the active energetic figure or in 
the square dark face. The characteristic Hawaiian 
features were less apparent now than they had 
been in his boyhood, for the long war experience 
had drawn the whole face into sterner, harder 
lines; yet unmistakably, at the first glance, the 
race proclaimed itself. It was in the eyes that the 
native was least expressed. Deep-set and thought¬ 
ful, they rather abashed Philip at times; soldier’s 
eyes, that had looked overlong on death and sense¬ 
less mutilation. More than once they had given 
Philip a biting sense of the futility of his own 
long, easy, aimless life. 


CREPUSCULE 


197 


After a few leisurely puffs at his cigarette, 
Richard looked up. “ Prime minister of Wahaina- 
lua, eh? Rather a comedown for my family, 
cousin.’ ’ 

i1 I hadn’t regarded it in that light, Richard — 
but undoubtedly your grandmother would have 
done so. The Princess Kameolani had your an¬ 
cient grandeur very much at heart. Too bad you 
never knew her — a beautiful woman, and a rare 
story-teller, I remember. Your grandfather I 
suppose you recall quite well.” 

“ A child’s impressions — uncomfortable ones. 
He disliked me rather, you know. Sha’n’t we go 
out to the lanai? Sing won’t give us dinner for an 
hour yet, and it’s a shame to waste the sunset in¬ 
doors.” 

Philip rose, a bit stiffly after the unusually pro¬ 
longed ride, and followed his young host outdoors. 
Richard was living in the largest of the two resi¬ 
dential cottages on the Haina-Haina plantation-— 
the one built more than forty years before by old 
Haddon, the former missionary. The smaller cot¬ 
tage, built for the manager during the younger 
Haddon’s — Liliha’s husband’s — lifetime, was 
now assigned to a group of young men, Richard’s 
lieutenants, in charge of various plantation activi¬ 
ties. The older house, shaded on three sides by a 
wide, vine-draped lanai remained virtually as old 
Haddon had left it, except that Richard had trans¬ 
formed the former dining room into the office of 
the estate. 

As the two men stepped from the office to the 


198 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


lanai they paused for a moment to contemplate in 
silence the evening transfiguration of the familiar 
sweep of earth and sea and sky. The house stood 
on rising ground nearly five hundred feet above 
the ocean. Behind it, now directly in their vision, 
rose the mountain, snow-crowned at this season, 
highest of the two ancient volcanoes that domi¬ 
nated the north and south coasts. From the 
steamer, early that morning, Philip had seen them 
rising out of the ocean, — the bare breasts of the 
Earth-mother that had given the Island birth. 
From the plantation house the low swell of the one 
mountain loomed across the whole eastern horizon. 
The rich cane fields of Haina-Haina drew their 
nourishment from copper-red soil transmuted 
from the ashes of its old fires; were watered by the 
clouds that clustered above the white crest. Cloud 
streamers lay upon the summit now and stretched 
far across the eastern sky. 

The western horizon, they saw as they rounded 
the lanai, was nearly clear. Before seating him¬ 
self on this seaward side Philip paused again to 
look down across the yellow-green fields to thq 
group of jagged lesser mountains at whose base 
the town of Wahainalua lay. The sun was set¬ 
ting behind this chain and long purple shadows 
stretched far across the green. Amber glowed on 
the sea. A distant island was a flame-colored 
mirage. 

Philip sighed as he sank into a wicker chair. 
“ There’s nothing like it the world over! ” he 
said. “Aren’t you glad to have this peace and 


CREPUSCULE 199 

beauty around you, Richard, after your years of 
war? " 

“ Glad! " echoed Richard with a short laugh. 
“ That doesn't express it." He sat down on the 
lanai railing, leaning shoulder and hea<j against 
the angle of the house as he looked out at the line 
of the coast. ‘ 1 It isn't only the beauty and peace 
here, nor even the job, interesting as that is; the 
Island to me is home. It's strange, too. Mother 
would never bring me here, and later, when I could 
have come alone, there was never time. But I 
used to dream about it when I was a kid, and when 
I set foot here it was as if I'd known it always. 
The Island blood, I suppose." 

The boy had one likeness to Tom, Philip re¬ 
flected; an intimacy once established was never 
impaired by separation. Brief though their con¬ 
tacts had been since Richard had left college, and 
separated by intervals of years, Richard, nearing 
thirty, was as much his friend and confidant as he 
had been when nearing ten. No fear of giving 
offense need check him. The question that had 
troubled Philip's mind all through the intervening 
words rose now to his lips. 

u Why do you say that your grandfather dis¬ 
liked you, Richard? He did for you what he’d 
have done for no one else — left Wahainalua to 
travel to San Francisco to see you, not once but 
many times." 

Richard shrugged. “ He was awfully decent to 
me always, of course — devoted to me in a way. 
But a child knows. He couldn't stand the brown 


200 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


man in me when we were actually face to face. 
Naturally a kid of six or seven doesn’t figure out 
that kind of thing. But he knows as well as a dog 
does which man is really his friend. I came across 
an old diary of his at Wahainalua a few months 
ago — among those plantation records I sent up 
to you. I shouldn’t have read it, perhaps, but it 
cleared up a lot. Life wasn’t all roses for the old 
man. Nor for my mother; I know that now. It 
never occurred to me as a child, or even much 
later, that she might suffer too in the general 
mess. She seemed above it all — apart. It was 
my father I felt for — cared for — most. Island 
lure again, perhaps — the gypsy blood to the 
gypsy blood.” 

“ Is the pull as strong as that, Richard? ” 
Philip looked at him curiously. “ After all, it’s 
a mighty small part of you, that gypsy blood.” 

After a moment Richard laughed. “ A hot old 
* time I must have given you when I was a young¬ 
ster. Remember when I ran away from school? 
God! How those merciless kids did torture me 
before I beat it for home! I remember I meant to 
come to the Islands then. I’ve passed the stage of 
being ashamed,” he continued, after another 
pause. “ The war cured me of that. When I saw 
what civilized man is really like, I felt glad to be 
linked up a little closer to the savages we all are 
at heart.” 

Silence fell between them again. The sun was 
now completely out of sight, shadow falling every¬ 
where across land and sea. From the sky, where 


CREPUSCULE 


201 


light still lingered, trilled the song of a lark, Shel¬ 
ley’s lark, transplanted years ago to this island 
along with other properties and customs not 
always entirely to the good. What did the song 
mean to Richard? The beauty of the‘present, or 
visions of trench agony among the poppy fields? 
Neither apparently, for he said: 

“ Grandfather’s diary confirmed me in one 
determination I’ve long held — never to marry, 
unless it’s with my own kind. There’s always a 
streak in us natives, he says, that the white mate 
hates and can’t understand. I could have gone 
him one better on that — told him it doesn’t stop 
with the mate but extends to the child — that 
sense of difference, of never meeting on common 
ground.” He laughed suddenly on a new, more 
careless note. 4 ‘ On the whole, I think I’m off with 
marriage for good and all. I’ve given these Island 
belles the once-over and they don’t in the least 
appeal.” 

The boyish turn gave Philip once more a sense 
of Tom. “ You aren’t consistent,” he said 
lightly, to cover his own twinge of loneliness for 
that old lost companionship. “ How about that 
boasted Island lure? ” 

“ Civilized out of ’em. Gone. All cut to the 
pattern of the American public school. Silk 
stoekings on their legs, powder on their noses, 
cootie cages over their ears; they’re a ghastly 
fraud. But I’m satisfied. A horse and a job, a 
surf board and a cook like Sing — what can a man 
ask for more? ” 


202 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


“ That reminds me! ” Philip was glad to main¬ 
tain the new mood. “ YouVe got to reckon with 
me, young man, for the unwarranted removal 
of Wahainalua’s most valued appurtenance. I 
thought Sing went with my house. I find him here 
and Wahainalua a culinary desert. Kindly 
explain .’ 9 

“ It's up to Sing to explain that, not to me.” 
Richard folded his arms and swung a leg in ironic 
complacency. “ I had nothing to do with it. 
Came home one day to find Sliima deposed and 
Sing installed. It seems he regards me as a kind 
of feudal lord — served my grandfather, hence 
me. You are an upstart, a parvenu. What are 
your petty inconveniences to him? Hideous old 
duffer with his one eye — hut he sure can cook! ’ ’ 

“ Ever hear how he lost that eye? ” 

“ No.” 

“ Saving that long-dead little brother of yours 
from a fireworks explosion on one of our old mur¬ 
derous Fourths of July.” 

“ Faithful old cuss! ” said Richard thought¬ 
fully. “ Another of those godless backward peo¬ 
ples that you whites feel incumbent upon you to 
civilize!- There’s Antone at last . 9 ’ 

“ What is Antone? That snorting? Sounds 
like a decrepit Ford.” 

“ It is. Watch the clansmen gather. Antone 
carries the mail.” 

It was Richard more particularly that Philip 
watched, however, as he swung off the lanai rail¬ 
ing to join the young men who now drifted across 



CREPUSCULE 


203 


the lawn from the other house. Philip had met 
them all that afternoon, — Lee, the storekeeper, 
tall and languid, with the pallor bred by an indoor 
occupation in the Islands; McDonald, the mill 
superintendent, a Scotch machinist, so small and 
compactly built, so sparing of words, that the 
superfluous r’s in his broad speech seemed oddly 
out of character; the doctor, Field, a trim young 
fellow fresh from his interneship, and Patterson 
— Philip’s eyes frowned through the dusk to focus 
on him — the red-headed headstrong son of a 
headstrong father, earning his bread here on a 
neighboring plantation rather than subject him¬ 
self to unwelcome discipline at home. 

Philip was curious to see how Richard bore him¬ 
self among these men. He had not been without 
his hesitation in appointing one so conspicuously 
of Island blood to the command of the two estates. 
Here, if anywhere, race prejudice might be ex¬ 
pected to make Richard’s task a well-nigh impos¬ 
sible one. The appointment had been frankly 
experimental at first, a desperate measure initi¬ 
ated only because no other candidate at the 
moment had presented himself. He thought now, 
as he watched the young men grouped before him 
in the dusk, that of them all Richard alone bore 
himself like a commander of men. He liked the 
outward aspect of the relationship between chief 
and subordinates, — deference in the working 
hours; at an off moment, like this, no exclusion 
from the easy give and take of the slangy inter¬ 
course that they termed talk. 


204 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


The suffering motor, panting at last to the door, 
discharged a fat Portuguese in white riding suit 
and cork helmet. He turned to lift out the long 
anticipated mail hag. 

“ Hello, Antone,” said Patterson. “ Late 
again. Did Ben Hur break down this time ? ’’ 

“ Ben Hur? Who she? ” Antone enquired. 

Patterson laid his hand on the car. “ This old 
bird. Named after an ancient sporting gent. 
Ran races, you know. Beat everything in sight.” 

“ Boat some late,” said Antone with evasive 
dignity. He followed Richard into the office with 
the bag. The other men, too, trooped into the 
house. Philip, after a moment’s hesitation, also 
followed with a little shiver. He was not accli¬ 
mated yet; he felt the chill of the mountain breeze. 

“ Here you are, Antone.” Richard handed him 
the bag, filled now with outgoing mail. “Good 
night. Thanks, Pat, that’s tine.” 

The boy — he was noticeably the youngest of 
the group — leaned beside Richard, helping him 
sort the letters. Philip turned his eyes from the 
two heads so close together, dully resenting the 
fairness of the lad. 

“ All right! ” said Richard at last. “ Here you 
are, Field, for the hospital. These for the store, 
Lee; these for the village. Nothing for the mill 
to-night; nothing for you boys. Pat gets the only 
haul. ’ ’ 

“ Nothing but bills,” said the boy with a sulky 
look. 


CREPUSCULE 205 

“ Forgotten you already, has she? ” jeered Lee. 

44 She! They, you mean! ” said Field. 

“ Shut up! Come, let’s light out.” Patterson 
left the room, omitting the recognition of Howard 
that the other men rather ceremoniously accorded 
him. Richard and Philip were once more left 
alone. 

“ How do you like young Patterson, Richard? ” 
the older man asked. 

“ Oh, Pat’s a pretty decent sort — if he hadn’t 
been spoiled at home.” Richard laid down a pile 
of unopened letters on his desk with a muttered, 
‘ ‘ All business — they can wait till morning. ’ ’ He 
returned to stand near Howard. “ A good head 
on him. He ought to be back in college finishing 
his engineering course. But it’s hard to get his 
kind back after a year in the army, and perhaps on 
the whole he’s better off here till he accumulates a 
bit more sense.” 

i ‘ Rather wild, eh ? ” 

“ Rather! ” said Richard dryly. 

Howard took two or three thoughtful turns 
about the room. “ Richard, I haven’t told you 
what brought me down here a month ahead of 
time.” 

“ No.” Richard gave him a quick glance. 

Philip’s eyes met his earnestly, searchingly. 
Then he turned away and sat down. “ When we 
decided that you should run these plantations, I 
told you that you should have a free hand to carry 
out your own ideas.” 

“ Yes,” said Richard, as Philip paused. 


206 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


11 Needless to say I’m satisfied — far beyond all 
expectation. And as far as Wahainalua is con¬ 
cerned, that arrangement holds — uncondition¬ 
ally. What you do here will have to depend on 
what adjustment you arrive at with the owner.” 

“ Owner! ” Richard looked challengingly at 
him. “ You haven’t sold Haina-Haina! ” 

“ No. But you see, Richard, that little ward of 
mine, Helen Kingsley, has grown up. She’s old 
enough to take charge of her own affairs. She’s 
coming down on the Wilhelmina next week. I 
retire then, and you and she will run the ranch 
between you. I’ll have no more to say.” 

“ Oh, Lord! ” said Gregory. He sat down on 
the table corner and ran outraged fingers through 
his hair. “ I’m through. What does a girl know 
about a plantation? ” he demanded. “ What does 
she care? How much money she can pull out of 
it — that’s all. All those improvements we’ve 
started — the school, the housing, the playgrounds 
— Cousin Philip, do you mean to let a fool girl 
play havoc with all our plans? ” 

“ That’s for you to say.” Philip’s eyes were 
intent upon him. 4 ‘ It depends altogether on you, 
I think, whether Helen is to regard the plantation 
as a plaything or as a responsibility. It’s natural 
for you to think of the plantation first. To me, 
Helen comes first. But I want her to take the 
plantation seriously. The steadying effect of a big 
responsibility is more valuable to her now than all 
the gold you’ve made for her.” 

“ Damn the gold! ” said Richard. “ The sugar 


CREPUSCULE 


207 


market made that for her, not I. It’s the develop¬ 
ment of the plantation I’m worrying about. She ’ll 
want her own development, not mine. I know 
women. They want to run things — always! And 
then where do I get off ? ” 

Inelegance in earnestness was the hallmark of 
the younger generation, Philip thought with in¬ 
ward amusement. He was enjoying the working 
out of the little comedy he had devised. Long 
cogitation had confirmed him in the conclusion 
that he had found the one way to fight Liliha’s 
dominance. Had Helen no more than half the in¬ 
tellect and imagination he credited her with, she 
could not fail to be impressed by the magnitude 
of this enterprise, hers by inheritance, but brought 
to its full scope and productiveness only through 
the creative ability of this man at his side, — this 
man whom already she half idealized. If Richard 
knew that! 

“ Come,” he said, with a twinkle in his eyes. 
“ You take this too hard. Where do you get off, 
indeed! At your age I should have regarded the 
attractive part of the journey as just begun. 
She’s a mighty attractive girl, let me tell you, 
young man. ’ ’ 

“ The more attractive they are the less they 
care about my dope — that’s one comfort,” he 
said with a revival of hope. ‘ ‘ I ’ll turn Pat loose 
with her. I ’ll warrant him capable of keeping her 
mind off the plantation and all it holds. ’ ’ 

“ That is exactly what must not happen! ” said 
Philip sharply. “ I’m in earnest about this, Rich- 


208 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


ard, deeply in earnest. Helen’s mental develop¬ 
ment in the next few months is v going to affect most 
profoundly her whole life. It’s no time for her to 
be frittering her thoughts. Naturally I don’t pro¬ 
pose to discuss the child with you, Richard. But 
I have counted on you to help me through a most 
trying time. I want you to stimulate her interest 
in every aspect of plantation life — make her feel 
her own part in it, her deep responsibility. After 
all, the day will come when she must run her own 
affairs. Better that she should understand them 
from the beginning. Let her grow up in sympathy 
with your ideas, not opposed to them, as she is 
much more likely to become at a less impression¬ 
able age.” 

‘ ‘ Oh, very well! ’ ’ said Richard, still grumpily. 
He rose from the table and looked at his watch. 
“ Sing will be ready for us. Anybody coming 
with her? ” 

“ Mrs. Heath, under whose care she has been 
ever since her mother died. And a maid, I 
believe.” 

“ I’ll have to turn this cottage over to them and 
bunk with the boys, then.” Suddenly Richard 
grinned. “ It’s up to you, Cousin Philip, to 
square that end of it with Sing! ” 


CHAPTER XV 


ISLAND LURE 

The following week Philip went to meet Liliha 
and Helen on their arrival in Honolulu. As he 
sat in his steamer chair on the day-long voyage 
from Wahainalua — coasting by green cane fields 
and shrubby gulches with their multitude of water¬ 
falls; seeing one island fade vision-like behind 
him and another rise out of the sea to take its 
place — he was conscious of the stir of an emotion, 
that was almost dread. The sense of drama that 
Liliha from his first glimpse of her had so often 
quickened was sharply alive now. In this return 
to her old home, unseen for forty years, would she 
feel as he did the tragic import in the confronta¬ 
tion of the stout, elderly Liliha of to-day with the 
specter of the dancing nymph who had been her 
old self? Would the years rise to mock her, to 
torment her with the memory of the gay hope and 
confidence of the ohia-crowned goddess of the 
dawn? Poor broken goddess, immortal now only 
as thought could summon back the vision of her 
early self! His mind went back to its one untar¬ 
nished memory — Lucy, still beautiful as in the 
dewy freshness of her youth. Lucy was the god¬ 
dess, the immortal, to whom, loving her, the gods 


210 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


had accorded death, not cursed with decrescent 
life. Lucy and the baby who had never breathed. 
Suddenly the old rebellion surged over him. 
Sophist that he was, idle phrase-maker! Better a 
thwarted life of frustrated striving such as 
Liliha’s had been than the extinction of early 
death. 

Lucy’s image faded. He found his thoughts 
dwelling on Liliha almost to the exclusion of 
Helen, a thing that had not happened for years, 
not since the baby whose business affairs he had 
promised to guide had herself come to be the 
object, the guiding principle of his own life. He 
recalled the years of his guardianship, not as he 
so often did, to enjoy in retrospect memories of 
his vicarious parenthood, but reviewing them in 
their relation to the woman who had effaced her¬ 
self for the child’s sake. The complex of passion 
and ambition and will that was Liliha! There had 
been a period when it had seemed to him that the 
power of this woman was definitely on the wane. 
This had followed closely upon what he had long 
considered the apex of Liliha’s moral develop¬ 
ment. The impulse that had led her to subordi¬ 
nate her own future to that of the child had been 
a wholly selfless one; of that he still felt con¬ 
vinced. Later, only, had entered into it self-plau¬ 
dits, complacency, symptoms of the inevitable 
moral slump. With so much on the credit side 
of her ledger she could afford herself minor indul¬ 
gences. And indulge herself she did. She became 
mentally lazy. Incessant novel reading replaced 


CREPUSCULE 


211 


the former activity of a fertile, curious mind. 
She formed the cocktail habit; dressed slackly; 
allowed herself to put on flesh. 

What had aroused her out of this lethargic self- 
indulgence he had never been able to surmise. He 
had become conscious of the awakening only after 
her return to California, when his increasing inter¬ 
est in Helen had made him unobservant of what 
always before had held him enthralled, — the 
motor impulses behind Liliha’s actions. He had 
not known that the Liliha of power and energy 
was again on the throne until he had found him¬ 
self involved in a combat with her will. The ques¬ 
tion of Helen’s education had brought the struggle 
about. Liliha had produced a governess just as 
he had decided to send the child to a girl’s school 
situated within easy motoring distance of her 
country home. The issue had doubled its impor¬ 
tance for him when he had realized her renascent 
strength. It seemed more than ever imperative 
to remove Helen as much as possible from her 
influence. He had made no breach in her opposi¬ 
tion, however, until he had stressed the social 
advantage to Helen of an early intimacy with the 
circle in which Liliha dreamed to see her ulti¬ 
mately placed. 

Liliha’s capitulation had disarmed him com¬ 
pletely. He had been satisfied to gain his end, 
never realizing until that evening in Helen’s liv¬ 
ing room a month ago that not for a moment had 
Liliha relinquished hers, — to keep Helen headed 
in the direction she had chosen for her. Liliha 


212 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


still held the helm. She had merely altered her 
course to jibe with the wind, had never lost sight 
of her port. He saw now that this was what she 
had always done. Long ago, one afternoon on the 
headland above Wahainalua, when together they 
had watched the Rosalie sail away and he had told 
her that legally she could not marry Tom, how 
quickly her mind had accepted the fact, had shaped 
a new course accordingly! When she had been 
blown out of that course by her own passion — 
blown even upon the rocks — she did not allow 
that to bring the voyage to an end. She manned 
a new boat and made a new start. Years later, 
when her mad abandonment at the Mare Vista ball 
had wrecked her again, she had accepted that hard 
fact just as unreservedly, had set sail on a new 
course to bring a child of her own blood to the land 
of her heart’s desire from which she herself was 
forever barred. 

It had grown painfully clear to him that evening 
a month ago that once more an apparent victory 
might accomplish little toward attaining his real 
end. Complete — bewilderingly complete Helen’s 
last letter had told him it had seemed to her — 
though Liliha’s surrender of authority might 
appear, secretly she would bend every effort to 
make the child continue to follow her will. The 
thought was intolerable. Unconsciously, in his 
rebellion, he straightened his shoulders and stiff¬ 
ened himself against it. She should not dominate 
the child if he had anything to say. He told him¬ 
self that the issue upon which Liliha had fastened 


CREPUSCULE 


213 


— that of Helen’s marriage — was of no immedi¬ 
ate importance. He could not picture Helen mar¬ 
ried, even swayed by love as yet. She was still a 
child. What was important was to build up 
strength, the will to make her own life. A better, 
broader life than any poor Liliha could conceive. 

A change of the ship’s course brought the shore 
line more clearly within his gaze. How beautiful 
the Islands were to-day. Low-lying clouds, shot 
through with rainbow color, threw over them a 
mysterious half-light. Almost one might fancy 
oneself coasting the shore of dreams. Did Liliha 
see the Islands thus? Her ship should be nearing 
Honolulu by now. Did it all come back to her, — 
her pure young joy in the sunlight, the caress of 
warm winds, the embrace of the welcoming sea. 

Not in sunshine, however, did Liliha come back 
to Wahainalua, but as she had left it, in soft clear 
moonlight. Philip stood beside her as the Mauna 
Kea pushed in toward the Wahainalua dock. He 
did not speak to her. She stood in utter silence 
by the rail. Helen, at a little distance from them 
among a group of young fellow voyagers, was 
hardly in his thought. Was she in Liliha’s? 
What did Liliha think as she gazed out at the 
cloud-illumined mountains, every line of whose 
crest must live in her memory; at the cocoanut 
palms, waving long ragged arms above the street 
where Abigail Adams had lived; at the sweep of 
flashing surf, — surf that her young courage had 
loved to breast? Was she thinking of the long 
years of self-effacement for a child now worse 


214 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


than indifferent toward her, or only of the young 
Liliha, as he himself all day had thought? 

Out in the bay shone tremulous bands of color 
reflected from the lanterns of the Japanese fishing 
fleet; along the slopes of the land twinkled house¬ 
hold lights innumerable. These had not shone in 
Liliha*s day. Otherwise everything was un¬ 
changed. The ship was close inshore now. The 
dock smell came out to him, — raw sugar and 
stale straw and sweating bodies. At .once his 
thoughts flashed back into the past, to the Kinau 
landing here and Liliha \s meeting with Captain 
Heath. A flare of the old jealous hatred for the 
adventurer that had smoldered in him through all 
the years brought Helen confusingly to mind. He 
groped for the connection. Then suddenly he 
remembered. The tricks life played! His Helen, 
beloved child of his old age, was of that scoun¬ 
drels blood. That he could have forgotten this, 
even for a moment, was proof how T completely he 
had grown to feel that Helen belonged to him. He 
thought how all her life he had willfully divorced 
her from connection with her parentage. He did 
not like, even, to think of her as Liliha S grand¬ 
daughter. From the day he had first seen her, 
kicking her baby heels upon his office floor, his 
heart had gone out to her as if she had really been 
the child of his own child, — which had never 
breathed. 

He moved away from Liliha to join the girl, 
feeling suddenly old and tired, incapable of meet¬ 
ing the thoughts that surged up from the past. 


CREPUSCULE 


215 


Her warm hand meeting his, her friendly arm 
linking itself close within his own, drew him back 
to the present into her confidence, her affection; 
made him feel secure again in the thing most 
precious to him in the world. 

“ They're running out the gangplank," Helen 
said, turning him away from the young people. 
“ I've said my good-bys. Let's join Mammy Lil." 

“ Richard will be here to meet us." Philip 
drew a steward's attention to their bags. ‘ ‘ They 
keep every one behind the gates now, unfortu¬ 
nately. It's not nearly so picturesque to land as 
it used to be." 

None the less all Wahainalua still came down to 
the dock to greet the boat and stood now crowded 
about the gate through which the passengers must 
pass. Through a medley of brown faces, Japanese 
and Chinese now by far outnumbering the native, 
the travelers fought their way to an open space in 
the great barnlike structure under an arc light. 
Howard, returning from a brief scrutiny of the 
crowd, saw Richard's alert dark face, so like yet 
so unlike the dusky people who impeded him in his 
approach. 

“ Ah, Richard! "he exclaimed. “ You've found 
us at last. Helen, this is Richard Gregory." 

Richard, stretching out his hand, withdrew it 
sharply to his side. Sickening realization flashed 
over Howard. The girl had never heard of Rich¬ 
ard's Hawaiian blood. For Helen, startled eyes 
on the young man, made no movement to meet his 
clasp. 


216 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


‘‘Richard Gregory! ” she repeated, like one 
dazed. 

Richard knew that he had shocked her, and why. 
The expression of his face told Philip that. A 
bare instant of stricken silence was broken by 
Helen’s laugh. She held out both hands to Rich¬ 
ard in a gay, friendly gesture. 

* ‘ How stupid of me! Of course you’d be young. 
But if you could hear Uncle Phil on your business 
sagacity, you’d believe yourself that you must be 
about his age.” 

Did Richard see that she knew she had hurt him 
to the quick, that she was trying to make amend? 
With all his heart Philip prayed for no shadow of 
antipathy between these two. And then revulsion 
seized him. How dare Richard stare so at his 
girl! 

Richard’s tension eased with a smile. After a 
quick cordial grip he released Helen’s hand. 

“I’m years older than he, really,” he said. 
“ Probably you are. He’s incurably young — 
haven’t you found that out? ” 

“ Mammy Lil! ” Helen turned to Liliha, who 
was standing somewhat apart in the shadow. 
“ This is Mr. Gregory — Mrs. Heath.” 

Liliha came forward with a majestic inclination 
of her head. 

“ Is the car waiting? ” she inquired coldly, in 
the tone she reserved for erring servants. “ It is 
growing late.” 

Helen shot her a furious glance. She stepped 
impulsively to Richard’s side and laid her hand 


CREPUSCULE 217 

lightly on his forearm. ‘‘ Take me to it,’ ’ she said. 
“ I hope it’s a make that I can drive.’’ 

Philip, accompanied by Liliha and the maid, fol¬ 
lowed the young people down the wharf to the 
street outside. Pie watched them with a frown. 
He wished that Helen would break that habit of 
touching men on the arm. It meant nothing nat¬ 
urally — a caress that she bestowed on men, 
kittens or puppies alike — but it might be misun¬ 
derstood. Not by Richard, of course. Hang the 
fellow; what was the matter with him? He 
seemed to be in a dream. Why couldn’t he chat 
and laugh in his normal way, not turn down on her 
that soldier look of his that gripped one’s very 
soul! 

Evidently Richard did relax, for when they all 
stood together beside the car, he had Helen in 
gales of laughter over the newest story of Antone 
and his chariot. 

To see his wish for easy intercourse fulfilled, 
however, gave Philip no pleasure, but rather the 
reverse. He broke in abruptly upon their talk. 

“ The car is uncovered, I see; that’s good. It’s 
a beautiful road, Helen. You drive, Richard? 
Perhaps I had better-” 

“ Not you! ” said Helen. “ Go in behind with 
Mammy Lil and Emma where you belong — that’s 
a dear! ” she added, to temper her sauciness. 

44 The baggage? ” asked Philip fussily, to cover 
his annoyance at Richard’s grin. Liliha had 
already ponderously seated herself. 

“ IPori is attending to that. Everything will be 



218 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


at Haina-Haina to-night. ’ ’ Richard held open the 
car door for Helen as he spoke. 

“ Oh, very well! ” said Philip shortly. He un¬ 
folded a seat and sat down behind Richard, his 
hand lingering near Helen’s shoulder. The little 
minx! She knew how to manage him too well. 
Merely turning to pat his hand and give him a 
smile left him content. But it was dear of her. 
Philip sighed and abandoned himself to the magic 
of the night. 

Richard and Helen too fell silent. They slipped 
away from the wharf into village streets, 
shadowed with tall cocoanut palms and feathery 
algarobas. From shadow-hidden gardens came 
faint tropical odors of flowers. They passed 
through the Chinese quarter, where lights shone 
and where the sense of smell less agreeably height¬ 
ened the exotic impression, and were out on the 
open road, threading an avenue of monkey-pod 
trees with sprawling branches netted against the 
sky. A group of silent dark huts of native fisher¬ 
men stood on the outermost confines of the town. 
Philip’s thoughts turned again to Liliha, sitting 
so silently behind him. It was in the opposite 
direction, on the other side of the village, that 
Liliha’s old home lay. Would she go, secretly per¬ 
haps, to visit it? Some of old Hana’s children 
might be living there to this day. He threw a 
quick look at Liliha, — only a dark silhouette, head 
turned toward the shining sea. If, as Helen 
thought, she loved the Islands and always had 


CREPUSCULE 219 

yearned for them, nothing of this love was 
apparent in her to-night. 

The avenue to the old Gregory house opened off 
their road to the right. Philip checked an impulse 
to call Helen’s attention to the place as his own. 
How quiet the boy and girl in front of him were! 
Oddly enough it seemed to Philip not the silence 
of constraint but the ease of old companionship. 
His two children, he had called them to himself, 
long since, not dreaming though, ever to see them 
side by side like this. The scents of the Island 
night, — out of the confused blur of old memories 
they aroused in him why should he suddenly fasten 
on old Gregory and his hopes and fears for Tom? 
He shook off the past, tried to forget even the 
young people in front of him, the brooding old 
woman behind. 

The car was speeding out into the country now, 
along stretches of sea beach where shone glitter¬ 
ing banners of surf, past fields of sugar cane, and 
up bare slopes of lava from which, as they wound 
higher, the sea lay wide and gleaming beneath 
them, stretching out mistily into far horizons. 
They rounded a cliff and Richard stopped the car, 
pointing to the dark cloud-capped mountain mass 
before them. 

“ The group of lights directly ahead is Haina- 
Haina, Miss Kingsley,” he said. 

Helen leaned forward. “ It looks so high — 
almost up the mountain.” 

“ Less than a thousand feet up. The mountain 
is more than half hidden in clouds.” 


220 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


The car started forward again, rounded the bay, 
and whirred onward among fields of cane. Philip 
remembered his first trip to Haina-Haina forty 
years ago. A slow tedious plodding for many 
hours it had been then; now the road unfolded 
before them with the changing rapidity of a 
dream. They passed a sleeping plantation vil¬ 
lage, then a lighted wayside shop whence came 
strains of oriental music and the high rapid 
patter of strange tongues. At the open gate 
Richard said: 

“ These are your own fields now.” 

The girl was silent, looking out across the wav¬ 
ing cane where the night wind played. 

“ It seems a long way,” she said at last. 
“ Where is the house? ” 

“ Not far now — on the highest part of the 
land.” 

The road dipped suddenly into a ravine, crossed 
a stream and climbed a steep hill. Trees con¬ 
cealed the houses until they were close upon them, 
— two low cottages in a wide expanse of lawn. It 
was rare good fortune, Philip had often thought, 
that the ugly mill and other plantation buildings 
lay beyond, out of sight behind a hill. 

They drew up before the vine-shaded lanai. 

“ Sing will attend to the bags,” said Richard, 
and ushered them into the house. 

Philip noticed at once that changes had taken 
place. The piles of newspapers and magazines 
were gone from the table; yawning gaps no longer 
showed in the book cases — every volume stood 


CREPUSCULE 221 

rigidly upright in its place. The wicker chairs 
had cushions primly arranged, not punched into 
comfortable lounging holes as before. Stripped of 
Richard’s belongings, the room had a bare unin¬ 
habited look. Conscientious house-cleaning had 
done its worst. 

“ You’ve moved, I see,” Philip said to Richard, 
with a grimace of distaste. “ Was that neces¬ 
sary ? I told you when I left, boy, that there was 
ample room for us all in the house. I wonder Sing 
let you go.” 

“ It’s Miss Kingsley’s house — we all seem to 
forget that,” Richard said. “ I haven’t vacated 
entirely. I’m sorry, Miss Kingsley, but the office 
is still cluttering up your dining room. We 
couldn’t find another place on the plantation big 
enough to hold the map cases and filing cabinets. 
I’m afraid you’ll find things pretty crude. The 
house hasn’t had a mistress in it since your grand¬ 
mother visited here nearly forty years ago.” 

Philip glanced at Lililia, standing aloof by the 
table, looking about her with a frown that hinted 
contempt for the simple furnishings. Then his 
gaze returned to the girl. Her eyes had a wistful 
look, he thought, as they rested on the old-fash¬ 
ioned furniture and the engravings on the paneled 
walls. 

“ I like it,” she said. “ It has such a nice Vic¬ 
torian ancestral look. But I’m ashamed to think 
I’ve driven you out.” 

Richard’s impetuous disclaimer was cut short 
by the entrance of Sing with the bags. He bent 


222 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


stiffly and set them on the floor, then lifted his 
grizzled head. 

“ Whe’h go, Licha’d? ” he demanded of the 
young manager unceremoniously. 

Richard exchanged an amused look with Helen. 
“ Mrs. Heath in the west room, I thought, Sing; 
Miss Kingsley in the east. You can make your 
own choice, though, ’ ’ he added to Helen. 

“ It doesn’t matter,” she said. “ Emma, I’ll 
take my own things.” 

As she and the maid ransacked the collection of 
bags and rugs, Philip became aware of a look of 
extraordinary fixity that passed between the old 
servant and Liliha. Then only he realized Sing’s 
association with the name of Heath. 

u I take! ” said Sing gruffly, when Helen fin¬ 
ished segregating her bags. Emma bore off 
Liliha’s possessions and Helen followed Sing to 
her room. The moment they were out of sight, 
Liliha swept forward with blazing eyes. She con¬ 
fronted Richard, striking one clenched fist into the 
other palm. 

44 That Chinaman must go! ” she said in a 
furious undertone. “ The one-eyed devil! I 
won’t have the creature around.” 

Richard’s steady look at her resolved into a 
sarcastic understanding smile. “ That’s for Miss 
Kingsley to say, isn’t it? ” he asked. “ Sing is 
rather too good a cook to lose. I see your objec¬ 
tion, of course. But I have a one-eyed Filipino in 
the mill who might consent to act as houseboy. 


CREPUSCULE 223 

Y/ ouldn ’t that meet the issue as well as getting 
rid of Sing? ” 

What hidden meaning lay in the words to lash 
Liliha so? She shrunk back with a livid face. 

How dare you — how dare you think that was 
what I meant? ” 

Richard shrugged. “ Race speaks to race/' he 
said bitterly. “ We don’t think these things — we 
know. We may hate each other, but we always 
understand.” 

The burning denial on Liliha’s lips died as she 
looked into his eyes. To Philip’s amazement her 
gaze faltered. She turned from them and sank 
into a chair in the shadow. 

Helen at that moment returned to the room, hat¬ 
less and coatless. Sing followed her, a broad 
smile on his face. He crossed the room to pick up 
Philip’s bags, pausing to say, 

“ You see, Licha’d? She cut queue — all same 
me! ” 

In spite of the tension of the previous moment, 
the two men joined Helen in a hearty laugh. At 
the door Sing paused again. 

“ She you’ glandmotheh? ” he asked Helen, 
with a jerk of his head toward Liliha. 

Helen, who was at the older woman’s side, put 
her hand on her shoulder. “ No,” she said with 
unusual gentleness. “ Only a very dear friend.” 

“ Huh! 99 said Sing, and disappeared. 

Richard came forward to the table. “ Good¬ 
night, Miss Kingsley,” he said. “ You must be 


224 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


tired.” He inclined his head gravely to Liliha, 
but she did not move. 

“ You’ll show me the plantation to-morrow? ” 
Helen asked. 

“ Whenever you want me to.” 

“ To-morrow of course — early.” 

Philip followed Richard out to the lanai steps. 

“Wonderful moonlight,” he said. “ Er — 
Richard — what did you mean about that Filipino 
with one eve ? ’ 9 

Richard smiled up at the moon. “ An old 
Hawaiian superstition. If you meet a one-eyed 
man you fail in what you are trying to do. But 
if you meet a second one — why, then everything 
will come out your way . 9 9 

“ I see,” said Philip. The younger man turned 
to go. “ Oh — Richard! ” 

“ Yes? ” Richard paused with his hand on the 
newel post. 

“ If I were you, I’d fire that Filipino.” 

Richard grinned. “ Superstitious yourself, eh? 
Matter of fact,” he added cheerfully, “I’d 
decided on that same myself.” 

He went across the lawn, whistling. Philip, 
after watching him thoughtfully a moment, re¬ 
entered the house. Helen buttonholed him at the 
door. 

“ Why didn’t you tell me — why didn’t you tell 
me! ” she said passionately under her breath. 
She drew away from him, saying aloud, “ 1 do like 
him so. Your Richard-” 



CREPUSCULE 225 

“ A Kanaka! ” Liliha’s voice rasped out from 
the shadow. 

Helen whirled into her own room and slammed 
the door. Philip turned angrily to Liliha, but the 
reproach died unuttered. Never had he seen 
blacker anger on her face, not even when Minnie 
Gregory had turned a scornful back on her at the 
Mare Vista ball. He watched her silently as she 
rose from her chair and without a word to him 
passed into her own room. 


CHAPTER XVI 


LILIHA COUNTS HER CARDS 

Regarded as a triumphal progress, Helen’s in¬ 
spection of the plantation next morning could be 
called an unqualified success. From the stand¬ 
point of intellectual development, Philip reflected, 
it was more open to question. After all, he 
thought, as he watched her riding along the road 
ahead of him, this was what he might have antici¬ 
pated. In spite of the riding trousers and boyish 
shirt that he privately disapproved, nothing so 
radiantly feminine had been seen in Haina-Haina 
for many years. Small wonder that these exiled 
young men swarmed about her. Not even gruff 
McDonald escaped the spell. All were clustered 
around her now except Patterson, whose domain 
they had not yet reached. Each man whose 
department she visited promptly declared holiday 
and added himself to her train. From the hos¬ 
pital, the mill, and the store she had gathered her 
recruits. There they rode beside her, each eagerly 
expounding that view of his department indis¬ 
pensable to her understanding of the whole. Per¬ 
haps the poor devils really did believe that they 
were trying to interest her in their work, when all 
that their hearts wanted was to interest her in 


CREPUSCULE 


227 


themselves. That was so transparently the case, 
— with all except Richard. Constantly at her 
elbow as he was, not even Philip’s jealous eyes 
could detect any projection of his own personality 
across the clean-cut exposition of his work. Not 
that this was altogether pleasing, either! Rich¬ 
ard’s detachment differentiated him too sharply 
from the rest. The perfect manner would have 
called no attention to itself. 

Helen, he was happy to see, queened it over 
them all alike. The little minx was having what 
she would probably confide to him later was the 
time of her young life. The homage of busy men, 
not of the boys to whom she was accustomed, could 
hardly fail to make the morning memorable. But 
aside from these men who flattered her by their 
attention, what impression was the plantation 
making on her? What did the occasion mean 
besides a welcome tribute to her youth? 

As far as he knew, this was Helen’s first sight 
of the grim world of toil. It had shocked her, he 
had felt, to see the Japanese women working in 
the fields with the men; to see them returning 
home from the early shift, dripping perspiration, 
smoke-blackened from the burning cane, begrimed 
from the black stalks almost beyond human recog¬ 
nition. What had she thought of the mill, of the 
strings of nearly naked coolies toiling ceaselessly 
to and fro with backs bent under the heavy nau¬ 
seous-smelling sacks of raw sugar; of the solitary 
workmen, patiently repeating dull mechanical 
motions all day long, in the roar and shake and 


228 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


heat of thunderous machinery; of the menace of 
those machines, the relentless rollers, that before 
now had crushed men’s bodies as carelessly as 
they broke the stalks of cane; of the steel claws, 
that in penalty for a single unwary instant had 
snatched men to their death? 

In the mill, indeed, he had seen her first eager 
gavety become overcast. She had breathed deep 
on emerging from it, had glanced thoughtfully 
about the worker’s village that lay just beyond its 
doors. It was Richard’s work, that village, an 
immense improvement over the miserable tene¬ 
ments that, to his shame, he himself had allowed 
to fester there through so many years. The 
humanities and industry, — these had been sep¬ 
arate entities in his youth, ideas as far apart as 
the poles. What did employers have to do with 
sick babies or amusements or schooling? One left 
all that to the charity organizations; to the church. 
It had been hard to adjust himself to the outlay 
of capital that Richard’s reforms had entailed. 
He had consented grudgingly, partly shamed into 
it by Richard’s denunciation of the two planta¬ 
tions as the most backward in their treatment of 
the laborers, the most medieval on the Island, 
partly in sheer deference to the young man’s 
recent bitter experience with life and death. He 
had had the undefined feeling that the young men 
who had fought for civilization had a right to 
decide what the trend of that civilization should 
be. A sentimental old fool, he remembered he had 
called himself, when the bills came in. 


CREPUSCULE 


229 


Now he found himself wondering what Helen’s 
impression of the improvements would be. He 
threw a frowning glance about him as they rode 
through the village toward the fields. Ugliness, 
bald ugliness everywhere. The unpaved street 
was deep in red volcanic dust. On either hand 
stretched a row of bare two-storied white-washed 
houses with upper lanais reached by ungainly out¬ 
side stairs. A few algaroba trees at one end of 
the street, a scrawny monkey-pod at the other; 
these were as yet the only shade. The village was 
clean, yes. Each family had the privilege of a 
decent privacy. A schoolhouse, a hospital, moving 
pictures once a week. These, and the mill. All 
of the laborer’s life was there. He had thought 
himself munificent in granting them so much a 
year ago. What would Helen’s young generosity 
think! What would be her verdict on his stew¬ 
ardship ! 

As yet he had no clew to what she thought of it 
all. She quickly threw off the soberness that for 
a moment had clouded her and led them on a gay 
canter down the road. Ugliness had vanished 
here. Ahead of them, behind a barrier of fleecy 
clouds, towered the blue mountain, a blue as deep 
and intense as the sea. On either hand stretched 
a rising plain spread with the green of growing 
cane or the red and purple-brown of newly 
plowed fields. The smoke clouds from the burn¬ 
ing cane that always hung low over some part of 
the fields all lay behind them. The bright atmos¬ 
phere about them now was undefiled. 


230 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


Richard drew in his horse where a rough track 
branched from the main road. He pointed to the 
dark veinlike line of a ravine that traversed the 
peneplain. “ The new irrigation ditch lies up 
there/ ’ he said to Philip. “ Do you think that too 
far for Miss Kingsley to ride this morning? ” 

“ Oh, surely not, Uncle dearest! ” the girl cried. 

“ Can you stand the heat? ” Howard asked 
doubtfully. 

“ I love it. Truly Pm not the least too hot. 
Just feel my hand.” 

“ We can stop short of the intake/’ Richard 
said. u It won’t add an hour.” 

Philip nodded his consent and fell silently in 
behind. The child was her prettiest, he thought, 
when she looked up at one. Her coloring was par¬ 
ticularly attractive out of doors. The faintest 
shadowing of freckles was brushed across the 
delicate bloom of her skin, like the leaf tracery 
that had dappled Liliha’s pale pink lioloku one 
day long ago, when he had watched her kneading 
poi. It was strange that he, who had revisited the 
Islands nearly twenty times, should be pricked so 
often now by the memory of those first days. Was 
there after all some resemblance to Liliha in the 
child, or was it Liliha herself who was never far 
from his thoughts, Liliha, as he had seen her that 
morning, enthroned in sullen majesty on the lanai, 
silently watching them ride away, — an ominous 
presence, purposeful, brooding, full of a resent¬ 
ment against himself that he could not understand. 

He was dropping behind. The merry voices 


CREPUSCULE 


231 


barely came back to him. He touched his horse 
lightly with his spur. They were riding now along 
the edge of the ravine. Its precipitous sides were 
clothed with dark verdure, velvet-soft in the dis¬ 
tance, but revealed close at hand as an impen¬ 
etrable jungle of vines, ferns, and treacherous 
lauhala roots. Brilliant blue morning-glories 
climbed to the tree tops, ohia blossoms flashed out 
from the green jungle like flocks of cardinal birds. 
Beneath the brilliant green hukui trees a consider¬ 
able stream flowed, laying bare dark ledges of 
volcanic rock and capriciously veiling them again 
in cascading waters. Even now men were working 
to harness this stream. Not much longer would it 
sing its way through the jungle. Instead, it would 
be turned to producing more fields of cane — 
where alien birds sang and nested, and alien men 
toiled endlessly to gain the livelihood that the 
Island had freely offered to its own. 

Ever since leaving the mill the dull boom of 
blasting had sounded from the cloud-hidden slope. 
Now for some little time the reverberations had 
ceased. Philip, glancing upward, perceived a 
rider cantering toward them down the road. It 
was Patterson, looking, Philip noted, uncommonly 
jaunty and debonair. His bare head shone like 
copper; he rode remarkably well. No use to go 
any farther, he told them. The roadway was a 
mess of broken lava from the blasts. He had 
given the day’s instructions to the lunars and was 
hitting the trail for the lowlands himself. Better 


232 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


put oft the visit till the morning, when he’d prom¬ 
ise them much more of a show. 

“ All right, Pat,” said Richard, turning his 
horse. “ I fancy, anyway, that Miss Kingsley is 
about fed up on sight-seeing for to-day.” 

Patterson shook his head with compassion. 

“ I know what you’ve gone through,” he said, 
urging his horse close to Helen and gazing down 
at her with almost tender solicitude. “ They have 
no mercy on the subject of this precious planta¬ 
tion. One dull detail piled on another. All very 
well, of course, when there’s nothing more impor¬ 
tant in the offing. But to-day-They do 

lack a lightness of touch, don’t they? And you 
fresh from Paris — New York-” 

His voice, gaining intimacy, became, as the dis¬ 
tance widened between them, inaudible to the five 
men riding in sulky silence behind. They heard 
Helen’s laugh ring out, saw her flourish her whip 
in gay disclaimer. 

“ Can you beat it? ” said Lee at last. “ What 
makes the girls always fall for him? ” 

“ The cheek of him! ” growled McDonald. 
“ 1 Dull details,’ says he! 4 No lightness of 
touch’ ! ” 

“ He’s got the trick of women, ’ ’ said the doctor 
gloomily. “ We can’t stand up to him. Hear her 
laugh now! Think of the bally fool I’ve been, 
studying medicine when I might be an undergrad¬ 
uate of Yale! ” 

“ That’s not Yale — it’s bom in you,” said Lee. 
“ Girl language is something a fellow don’t learn. 




CREPUSCULE 233 

All the same, he’s not the chap I’d pick for my 

sister to play-’ ’ he broke off with a sidelong 

look at Howard. 

Only a few moments later the riders ahead 
reached the junction of the two roads. 

“ Pat! ” called Richard. “ Oh, Pat! ” 

They checked their horses. Helen glanced back. 
Patterson sat looking at her, paying no heed to 
the call. 

“ We’ll have to leave you here, Miss Kingsley,” 
Richard said. “ I want Patterson to go with me 
to the Waipaku field.” 

u Let me go too,” said Helen quickly, before 
Patterson could shape a protest. 

“ I’m sorry — really it’s too far for you to-day. 
Field will tell you that you shouldn’t expose your¬ 
self too long to the heat at first.” 

“ Oh, have a heart, Gregory! ” growled Patter¬ 
son. “ Old Waipaku can wait.” 

“ So you said last week. Orders, Pat. Come 
along.” 

“ Tyrant ! ” Helen made a little face. “ You’re 
wabbly on your throne, though, or you wouldn’t 
ask the doctor to back you up. ’ ’ She yawned sud¬ 
denly and shaded her eyes with her hand. “ It is 
hot! I’m sleepy, Uncle Phil. Let’s go home. 
Remember you’re all dining with us to-night — 
every one! ” 

Philip had a baffled sense that evening of being 
a mere pawn in Liliha’s game. The dinner did not 
go off in the least as the simple family affair that 



234 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


lie and Helen had planned. It was served with a 
wealth of glass and shining silver that he had not 
known the house to possess. Flowers decked the 
table. The guests were assigned to their chairs 
by the formality of place cards. And in spite of 
his own reception of Richard as the plantation’s 
chief, in spite of Sing’s distinguishing him with 
special attention, Liliha contrived it that not Rich¬ 
ard but young Patterson was made to appear the 
honored guest. Liliha, magnificent in a dinner 
dress of black velvet, did not attempt to play 
hostess herself. Helen was pushed forward in 
that role. Philip thought that the girl was embar¬ 
rassed by the position, not so sure of herself as 
usual, feeling perhaps her inexperience. 

Patterson plainly was dazzled by Liliha, flat¬ 
tered by her attention, impressed by her familiar¬ 
ity with the nuances of Island life. Under the 
sunshine of her blandishments the blunt boy’s 
chrysalis fell from him and he emerged a man of 
the world. To Philip’s eyes, of course, he was 
callow, absurdly inflated by a clever woman’s 
cajoleries. Nevertheless Helen seemed impressed. 
And undoubtedly the lad had social experience, 
had the assurance born of inner conviction of his 
own exalted position. 

The other men, Philip was annoyed to perceive, 
had nothing to offer in contrast to-night. Under 
the spell of Helen’s buoyant companionship on the 
morning ride, they had been stimulated to a 
responsive gayety that had passed for wit. But 
Liliha’s grande dame manner was not calculated 


CREPUSCULE 


235 


to put them at their ease. She did not even afford 
them the relief of ignoring them. She courted 
them, indeed, plying them with questions that, he 
observed, never failed to evoke the crudest replies. 
Even Richard, whom Liliha never directly ad¬ 
dressed, added nothing. He had fallen into one 
of his impenetrable silences. Philip saw Helen 
glance at him once or twice questioningly when he 
gave Patterson the lead that he might so easily 
have claimed himself. 

Richard disquieted Philip to-night, made him 
feel enmeshed in a situation altogether different 
from that he had planned. From the moment of 
their meeting Richard had taken Helen far too 
seriously. He had seen the woman in her where 
Philip himself would have discerned only the child. 
It was no part of Howard’s educational scheme 
to have the young master develop a romantic 
interest in his neophyte. But the dread had been 
growing in him all day lest the boy be drawn into 
just that disastrous experience. It could bring 
Richard nothing but the deepest pain. For though 
no real barrier existed between them, nevertheless 
every tradition of Helen’s would revolt from the 
thought that marriage with Richard might be pos¬ 
sible for her. The bitter irony of it flashed over 
him, — that the child of a beachcomber’s casual 
breed should find shame in the thought of mar¬ 
riage with one in whose veins ran the blood of 
kings. But what had ironic fact to do with the 
myriad delicate threads out of which had been 
woven Helen’s concept of herself? He remem- 


236 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

bered Liliha’s passionate plea that this child be 
granted the white man’s unheeded gift of self- 
respect. Concealment of her parentage, that 
twenty years before had seemed a stratagem to 
be maintained or not as circumstance should sug¬ 
gest, had grown now to be a hydra-headed mon¬ 
ster standing between the white man’s dignity and 
self-scorn. Not without grave danger of bruising 
Helen’s young self-consciousness past all healing 
could the imaginary obstacle between these two 
children of his be removed. And without remov¬ 
ing it, it was inconceivable that Helen could over¬ 
look the bar sinister of race that set Richard apart 
in a world outside the one she had been brought 
up to call her own. 

And yet even on this point he had had his 
moment of disquietude. As he sat before his 
almost untouched plate, paying no heed to the gos¬ 
sip of a former social magnificence that was hold¬ 
ing Helen entranced, he recalled the return from 
their morning ride. They had ridden through the 
mill village a few minutes after the whistle had 
sounded the noon hour. The street, which had 
been deserted when they had first seen it that 
morning, was thronged now with half-naked chil¬ 
dren, with men and women of varying shades of 
yellow and brown. Portuguese, almost as swarthy 
as Hawaiians; bright-turbaned negresses; Fili¬ 
pino women with wide lacy sleeves, high kerchiefs 
and voluminous bright-textured skirts; Japanese 
women with babies astride their backs, scuffing by 
in sandals and kimonos; Japanese men, also in 


CREPUSCULE 


237 


native dress; Chinese; Koreans in long-skirted 
coats of grass linen; ragged Hawaiians, peddling 
their baskets of fish, — a strange dusky hybrid 
population gathered from the four corners of the 
world. 

Helen’s eyes had brooded long upon them. 
“ It’s rather wonderful,” she had said to him, 
“ the number of people who depend on him for 
what they get out of life — your Richard. He 
might almost be a king.’ 9 

“ He’s merely your agent,” he had answered 
rather gruffly. 11 He’s here to carry out your 
instructions. What they’re to get out of life after 
this depends on you.” 

She had given a little laugh. “ Imagine me — 
me! — ‘ instructing ’ Richard Gregory! ’ ’ 

Both jealousy and a vague uneasiness had 
stirred him then, but now he looked back as to the 
lesser of two ills upon her girlish idealization of 
the man who was almost a son to him. Better for 
her, perhaps, the ache of a passing fancy for 
Richard than ensnarement in Liliha’s schemes. 
As he watched Helen’s absorption in the glitter¬ 
ing vapid talk, he wondered for the first time 
whether Liliha’s shallow ambition had any part in 
the girl, whether the tinsel that Liliha loved could 
ever seem gold to her. How complacently sure he 
had been that Pat need not be feared! He had 
forgotten how little intellect counted for in the 
flowering time of young womanhood. 

If only the lad were not so infernally attractive 
to the eye! If only his cool worldliness did not 


238 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

bring Kingsley to the forefront of bis mind! 
Liliha, quite apart from her scheming, was pal¬ 
pably charmed by Patterson. Naturally she would 
be. Had she not told him long ago that infallibly 
she liked the wrong kind of man? It flashed over 
him suddenly that perhaps Helen too was doomed 
to be fatally attracted by this kind. How could 
she fail to be, with Liliha’s blood in her, and 
Kingsley’s, and Heath’s? Fool, fool that he had 
been, not to have known from the moment he laid 
eyes upon this scapegrace that Liliha’s strongest 
ally might be within Helen’s own breast! 

He lifted his eyes slowly, almost with abhor¬ 
rence, to Patterson’s face. With Helen’s happi¬ 
ness in such hands he could not go down in peace 
to his old age. Yet was the lad really as weak as 
instinctive dislike accredited him? Was he not 
attaching to one whose potentialities for good and 
ill were alike untried an obloquy altogether unde¬ 
served? God! That was the trouble; he did not 
know. No one could know until the test came. 

Liliha laid her napkin on the table, smilingly 
signaling to Helen that the time to leave the table 
had come. Philip’s frown deepened at the ges¬ 
ture. Every move the girl made to-night was 
directed by Liliha. Even the dress she wore was 
probably Liliha’s choice. The frilly white frock 
with its childish sash accentuated her youth, 
brought out the contrast of the older woman’s 
experience. Liliha looked taller to-night, carried 
herself with splendid dignity. The very cigarette 


CREPUSCULE 239 

in her fingers bore the implication of poise and 
potency. 

McDonald, with Lee and Field, lingered near 
the dining table to smoke, pretending, in their 
low-toned interchange of laughing talk, to have 
quite recovered their ease. Richard had strolled 
to the open door and stood leaning against the 
jamb, looking out. Checking his impulse to join 
him there, Philip moved over to Helen and put 
his arm around her as she stood beside Liliha and 
Patterson within the radius of light from the 
reading-table lamp. 

“ It’s been ripping to hear you talk of old times 
on our Island, Mrs. Heath,” Patterson said. 
“ My mother would have loved to hear you too. 
She knows lots of stories about those days, but 
not so many as you. It’s rather strange, though 
— I thought I knew all the families who had ever 
been prominent here, but I never happen to have 
heard your name.” 

Liliha smiled at him with pensive sweetness. 
“ It would have been stranger if you had known 
it,” she said. The bell-like voice silenced the talk 
of the men. “ I have never pretended to be a part 
of society here. We Hawaiians find it more — 
diplomatic — to choose the part of obscurity than 
to have it forced upon us. Mr. Gregory and I are 
grateful when you receive our dark faces among 
your white ones as you have to-night, but we make 
no claims as to our station — our right to the 
privilege. ’ 9 

In the stillness that fell upon the room Philip 


240 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


heard Helen draw a deep breath. She lifted her 
head to look straight into Liliha’s eyes. Then 
swiftly she crossed to Richard’s side and locked 
tense hands around his arm. 

“ Come, Richard Gregory! ” she said. “ Come 
out on the lanai with me. ’ ’ 

He looked at her without moving. She gave his 
arm a little shake, laughed into his somber eyes. 
‘ ‘ Come along — Othello! Tell me how you won 
your war! ” 

Liliha stood motionless, staring at the doorway 
whence Helen, with a defiant swirl of her white 
flounces, had vanished with Richard. Patterson, 
pursing his lips into a silent whistle, strolled over 
to join the smokers, all of whom, after casting 
glances of black anger on the woman who had 
insulted their chief, ignored her presence. She 
stood as alone, Howard felt, as aloof from all the 
life about her, as she had seemed to him that Sun¬ 
day in Paris, years ago, sitting lonely on a bench 
in the Exposition grounds. Through all his out¬ 
raged loyalty to Richard he felt a stab of pity for 
her, the most solitary being he had ever known. 

Liliha’s eyes burned suddenly into his. Solitude 
she accepted but not defeat, so her scornful smile 
at him said. 

“ Quick work you’ve done with your riding 
parties and moonlight drives, Philip Howard! ” 
she commented in a bitter undertone. “ You win 
this hand. But now I know the game, I’ll not miss 
another trick. I’ll know better what’s trumps 
another time.” 


CHAPTER XVII 


YOUNG GREGORY SPEAKS 

It was a Sunday afternoon, nearly a month 
after Helen’s arrival, and she and Richard and 
Liliha — the latter now enjoying a siesta upstairs 
— were Philip’s guests at Wahainalua. They 
were sitting in the library of the old Gregory 
house, in the window embrasure that looked out 
over the sea. 

The room still remained substantially as Philip 
remembered it in Kameolani’s lifetime. He had 
bought the house furnished from Tom, complete 
as it stood, even to books — and Sing. Naturally 
on Philip’s yearly visits there he had added 
possessions of his own, but he still thought of this, 
liked to think of it, as old Gregory’s room. A 
room full of ghosts. Philip could see them there 
behind the gray blur of his cigar smoke: old Greg¬ 
ory with his massive hunched shoulders and his 
sallow melancholy face; Kameolani, mellow, indo¬ 
lent, — he could almost hear her rich lazy voice, 
the boy Tom, laughing, arrogant, on whom the old 
man’s most somber looks were bent. Old man, 
indeed! Younger than Philip himself now was by 
at least a dozen years the old man had been when 
Philip first met him here. Impossible to realize 


242 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


it! Did Helen, in spite of her asseverations to the 
contrary, really consider him old? Did Richard? 

Philip looked thoughtfully at the two young 
people before him, absorbed in a discussion that 
had failed to interest him. The little frown of 
concentration that had been his since boyhood 
deepened as he gazed. What an attractive pair 
they made! He had a moment’s envy for Rich¬ 
ard’s fresh, alert look. He himself was tired. 
This was the first time in a frenzied week that he 
and Richard had taken their ease. Wahainalua 
had been giving them difficulties of late. His plan¬ 
tation was a small one, and its close proximity to 
the harbor and to the village from which it derived 
its name made unnecessary the elaborate develop¬ 
ment of railroads and housing plans that the 
greater enterprise at Haina-Haina demanded. 
Nevertheless Wahainalua had its troubles, includ¬ 
ing the universal labor problem. A threatened 
strike, indeed, was the immediate difficulty. Rich¬ 
ard had succeeded in averting it for the present, 
at the cost of concessions of which Philip did not 
approve. He did not like the new truculence of 
the oriental laborer. Every one was too independ¬ 
ent here, had made too much money since the war. 

Not the least of his dissatisfaction — his 
grumpiness, the minx had called it at lunch — 
was that he had been separated from Helen all 
the week. Only that morning she had arrived, 
a striker herself, she had declared, against further 
isolation at a deserted Haina-Haina that was bor¬ 
ing her to tears. Philip’s half-hearted protest 


CREPUSCULE 


243 


over the telephone, his plea of an incompetent 
household staff she had overborne by restoring 
him Sing, temporarily only, she warned him. So 
she had arrived, with Liliha and Emma and Sing 
and a chauffeur. She went visiting with a retinue 
like a queen, he had told her, a remark, he had been 
amused to note, that Liliha took in high but silent 
dudgeon. 

Helen had been in the gayest spirits at the lunch 
table, bubbling over with mischief after her week 
of banishment. Even Pat, she had told them, who 
might have been depended on as a companion for 
rides and tennis and swims, had been inconveni¬ 
ently summoned home by an ailing mother. She 
had him there still at Haina Kua, tied to her apron 
string. Pat didn’t think he’d ever get away again, 
he had written her, unless he’d throw up his job 
and promise to live at home. Relatives were 
an awful drag; a bore, she had always con¬ 
sidered them. That remark too had displeased 
Liliha, who had sharply commended Pat for his 
filial deference, an attractive quality in the young 
that Helen might do well to emulate. To this 
Helen had demurely replied that ancestor worship 
was both heathenish and out of date. Moreover, 
she had no one handy on whom to exercise the 
rites. She’d always thought that the Lord, in 
removing all such venerable obstacles from her 
path, had given her to understand that the defer¬ 
ence otherwise due to them she might justly claim 
herself. Richard’s satisfaction in this riposte he 


244 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


had not attempted to conceal, and Liliha had sub¬ 
sided into sulky silence. 

Richard too had been all gayety at lunch time, 
teasing Helen especially for her evident depend¬ 
ence on an inferior sex. In the absence of Pat, 
it appeared, and the other men’s consequent ab¬ 
sorption by overwork, she had actually been driven 
to help Sing with the guava jelly. Domesticity 
was the modern woman’s last resource, Richard 
had told her. He was grieved at the intellectual 
barrenness that could drive her to it in a week’s 
time. 

Now, with Liliha upstairs for her usual after¬ 
noon nap, a different tone was apparent in their 
talk. Helen grew more sedate, became quite the 
woman of affairs. It amused Philip at first to hear 
this dainty little morsel of femininity questioning 
Richard about plantation matters. But as he sat 
there, lazily watching them through his smoke 
rings, his amusement changed to thoughtfulness. 
Something had happened to Helen in this week. 
She had grown — matured — in a quite extraor¬ 
dinary way. Her questions, indeed, might often 
be absurd in their crudity, their display of igno¬ 
rance, and yet they betrayed earnest intelligent 
thought. Richard was taking them seriously, an¬ 
swering them straight and to the purpose as if she 
had been a man. More than that, he was inter¬ 
ested, interested in an absorbed enthusiastic fash¬ 
ion that he never betrayed when talking of planta¬ 
tion matters with Philip alone. 

They had been discussing recreation for the 


CREPUSCULE 


245 


laborers, a subject that always left Philip cold. 
Not that he was callous or indifferent to any real 
need of his employees, he hastened to tell himself, 
but that he didn’t believe in sentimentalizing about 
them. Much of this democratic talk nowadays was 
rank nonsense. A servant had been a servant and 
a master a master in his time and as far as he 
could see nothing good had come out of making a 
man feel above his natural place. 

As he half-absently listened now in the rather 
critical, impatient mood that the trying week had 
fastened upon him, he became aware with growing 
wonder that in these, to him, annoying modern 
phases of industry Helen’s mind was meeting 
Richard’s on common ground. Lack of under¬ 
standing in details meant no failure to grasp the 
principle of the whole. His attention was piqued 
again. Where had the child, in her thoughtless 
life of indulgence and pleasure, ever caught this 
patter of the welfare worker? How did she come 
to know a dispensary or a day nursery from a hole 
in the ground? It was the fashion, he supposed. 
People talked these things now as once they had 
talked William Morris and Burne-Jones. Then, 
too, Helen’s school had adopted a devastated vil¬ 
lage in northern France. Helen had gone to visit 
it when she went abroad. She had never talked 
much about that visit to him, though he had over¬ 
heard her pouring out her heart to Richard in 
sympathy for the war-spent children. That had 
hurt him, had made him feel strangely lonely and 
old. 


246 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


It crossed his mind suddenly that Helen had 
never shown the least curiosity concerning the 
long years of his management. Apparently the 
plantation did not exist for her before Richard’s 
time, Richard, her contemporary. The thought 
stung him with the bitter consciousness of the 
years that lay between them. Was that why she 
could understand, could sympathize with Rich¬ 
ard’s plans as he had never honestly been able to 
do? He had never thought of the years as a bar 
to understanding or confidence. They had seemed 
to him an endowment, a rich fund of experience, 
which these children of his might draw on, from 
which they might gather strength. That, to be 
sure, had not been his own youthful attitude 
toward experience. By a trick of memory hi$ 
mind went back to his interview wfith old Gregory 
in this room, when they had talked of Tom’s 
marriage. Then Gregory’s experience had given 
the boy that he had been no added confidence that 
necessarily his judgment would be sound. On the 
contrary, he had instinctively distrusted that 
judgment as being somehow inimical to Tom’s 
youth. Loyalty to his own generation probably 
had prompted the distrust, but after all, had not 
the feeling been justified? Old Gregory, who had 
been able to see nothing but evil in Tom’s predi¬ 
lection for the brown race, had had his way. He 
had separated Tom from Liliha and sent each to a 
lifelong unhappiness. 

A trill of laughter from Helen brought Philip 
from this by-path of memory with a start. Tom’s 


CREPUSCULE 


247 


son, Liliha’s grandchild — Richard and Helen — 
the two beings he loved most on earth, were 
born of that old unhappiness. He considered 
them earnestly in the light of this new thought, 
considered them in all the promise of their youth. 
Glancing from the man to the girl, he was struck 
suddenly by a subtle resemblance between them, 
not in feature nor in coloring but in the shape and 
carriage of the head. As they faced each other, 
each drawn to a corner of the long davenport, the 
likeness was startling, emphasized as it was by an 
accident of the mode. Helen wore her short hair 
back from her forehead as did Richard, who, 
according to his careless custom, had allowed his 
hair to grow rather long. The silhouettes of the 
heads were identical, both characteristic heads of 
the Hawaiian race. 

Philip had long ago banished from his mind the 
possibility of Helen’s appearance ever betraying 
her Island blood. Now he wondered anxiously 
whether this would become more apparent as she 
grew older; whether, as the years went by, the 
delicate roundness of her face would broaden and 
flatten; whether the Island physique would over¬ 
lay the Saxon in her as it undeniably had in Liliha. 
Would revelation of her descent come to her that 
way? Or suppose that a child of hers should 
show the dark strain more than the parent, as 
Richard showed it more than Tom? What ter¬ 
rible shock, what ghastly tragedy, even, might he 
not have prepared for her! 


248 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


The stab of the thought goaded him from his 
chair. He left the window to prowl about in the 
shadowy depths of the room. Richard and Helen 
did not notice his going. They were absorbed in 
each other to the exclusion of everything else. 
They had drawn closer together, the boy expound¬ 
ing in deep earnestness, the girl leaning toward 
him, listening with a pretty deference. Richard 
glowed with a boyish happiness that Philip had 
not seen in him since the war. There was anxiety 
— pain — in that thought too. Had not for Rich¬ 
ard the first act of the tragedy already begun? 
No longer could Philip shut his eyes to the relent¬ 
less truth that Richard worshiped this girl who 
might consider his love an insult, marriage with 
him a disgrace. Indeed, how could she feel other¬ 
wise ! She had been skillfully schooled, how well 
schooled perhaps Liliha, for all her infernal clev¬ 
erness, did not herself guess. The tradition of a 
beautiful Southern grandmother, the fact that 
Helen’s closest school friend boasted a distin¬ 
guished Southern descent, had added a legendary 
prejudice to Liliha’s own propaganda of Helen’s 
superiority. Even if Helen loved Richard her 
pride would never admit — if she loved him! She 
did love him. A score of lambent impressions 
flashed blindingly into this truth. She had been 
drawn to him from the very first. He knew that 
now from the jealousy that had gripped him at 
the first token of sympathy between them the 
night of their meeting; knew it from her gust of 
anger at Liliha’s scorn of the Kanaka; from her 


CREPUSCULE 249 

constant defiance of Liliha in Richard’s defense; 
from her happiness in his mere presence! 

Stopping short in his uneasy march about the 
room, his hand gripped the bookcase for support 
as the whole significance of this for Helen flooded 
over him. Again across the confusion of regret 
and dread beat the words that had first brought 
home to him the tangled labyrinth that thought¬ 
lessly spun thread of deception had become, darky 
mammy! Only by hurting Helen, embittering her 
whole life perhaps, could she be made to see that 
nothing prevented her from marrying Richard if 
she chose. Could he do nothing to save her from 
the pain, the sure unhappiness that he saw ahead? 
He could see only one ray of hope. She did not 
know it yet. He felt sure that she did not under¬ 
stand herself. Perhaps he could get her away, 
absorb her in other things, other men. His mind 
went out even to Pat in his search for a reprieve. 
Was there after all anything to justify his dislike 
of the boy besides a jealous opposition to Liliha’s 
choice? Yes! Compare the lad to Richard and 
one found only weakness against Richard’s 
strength; carelessness against purpose; shallow¬ 
ness against depths. In a flash of self-revelation 
he read the truth of his own recent irritation 
against Richard; his heart had recognized him, as 
Helen’s had, as her mate. He was the man she 
ought to marry. And nothing stood between them 
except the barrier of falsehood that he had helped 
to raise. 

Still holding to the bookcase for support, feel* 


250 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

ing suddenly all the weight of his years, he stood 
with bent head, his mind groping painfully among 
stinging regrets, fears, dreads. Helen’s awaken¬ 
ing to the meaning of the vibrant happiness that 
had been growing in her was sure to come. Would 
her pride admit love for Richard or would the 
ambition that Liliha was trying to enkindle in her 
drive her in revulsion to what Pat could offer? 
Pat, with his fundamental worthlessness, yes, and 
his vivid personal charm, his high position in the 
world, that to Helen, with dark gulfs opening 
before her feet, might seem a very pinnacle of 
security and peace. There lay Liliha’s strength. 
Philip’s hand clenched over his determination to 
keep the sinister old woman’s hands from her, 
to give the child a chance to settle her own fate; to 
oppose Liliha by every means at his command. 

But what means had he? Where, in honest 
truth, did he stand ? He had told himself that his 
quarrel with Liliha centered on the question of 
her dominance. Helen should have the right to 
mold her own life. How could she? That was not 
possible when he had conspired with Liliha to 
withhold from her the most vital truth about her¬ 
self. He had nothing with which to fight Liliha. 
On the contrary he stood with her, side by side — 
a stumbling-block — stood even as old Gregory 
had stood, fending her off from the man he now 
believed nature had meant for her mate. 

Upon the tumult of his thoughts there broke the 
sound of the door opening. Philip turned. Liliha 
glowered in at them. 


CREPUSCULE 


251 


“ Helen,” she said, “ Mr. Patterson has tele¬ 
phoned. His mother has asked yon to tea. He is 
driving over for you and will be here any minute 
now.” 

“ Botheration! ” said Helen, without turning 
her head. “ Surely you didn’t say I’d go? ” 

“ Of course I did,” Liliha answered coldly. “ I 
myself heard you promise Mr. Patterson to go as 
soon as his mother was well enough.” 

“ Perhaps I did promise him once,” she admit¬ 
ted grumpily. “ But I don’t feel like going to¬ 
day. ’ ’ 

Liliha turned to Howard. 4 1 Do you wish her to 
be rude to an older woman w T ho is trying to pay 
her a compliment ? ’ ’ 

It angered Philip, this pretense of yielding him 
an authority she still held, a trick that Liliha had 
adopted of late. He fastened upon an instance 
that had profoundly annoyed him two weeks ago, 
when she had maneuvered him into another en¬ 
dorsement of Pat’s claim on Helen’s time. But 
he was too troubled to express resentment. 

“I’m afraid you ought to go, darling,” he said, 
putting his hand on Helen’s shoulder. “ You 
needn’t stay long, but if you promised Pat-” 

“ Oh, I know! ” she said, rising. The impa¬ 
tient child in her, clouding again her dawning 
womanhood, vaguely comforted him, put him more 
at his ease. “ Promises can’t be broken. I hate 
’em. I’ll never make another. They always go 
off half-cocked. What about Richard’s promise 



252 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

to me? He was going to take you and me on a 
walk that he’s always talking about.’ ’ 

“ We can still do that.” Richard turned from 
the window where he had withdrawn on Liliha’s 
entrance. “ It’s best about sunset. And there’s 
moon enough to come home by if you’re late. Tell 
Pat to drive you back by the upper road. We’ll 
meet you where the ditch crosses it — he ’ll know 
the place.” 

“ Right-o! ” said Helen, appeased. i( I’ll be 
there. You might bring along a pair of tennis 
shoes for me. I don’t think I’d get very far in 
these.” 

“ You are going to change your frock, surely? ” 
Liliha cast a disapproving glance at Helen’s pink 
cotton dress. 

“I’m going just like this—with the addition of 
a simply ravishing hat. Don’t I look all right? ” 
The words were directed to Philip, but her eyes 
teased Richard’s for a response. 

Liliha frowned. “ There is the car now,” she 
said. 

Helen darted over to the eastern window which 
looked out on the drive. “ Pat, sure enough,” 
she said, with a wave of her hand. “ Just see that 
old head of his in the sunlight. Isn’t it beautiful? 
I love it. If only I had had red hair! I can tell 
you, I’d have cut such a swath—Au revoir. Now 
don’t you forget! ” 

Liliha, following Helen from the room, almost 
collided on the threshold with Sing, who was 
coming in with a tinkling tray of lemonade. The 


CREPUSCULE 253 

Chinaman set the tray down on a table near the 
window and busied himself straightening chairs 
and cushions and gathering together some photo¬ 
graphs that Helen had carelessly strewn over floor 
and davenport. A sudden pause in his activities 
caused Philip to look around. Sing was standing 
by the east window intently watching Pat. He 
stood motionless until the car had driven away 
with Helen. Then with a muttered “ Huh! ” he 
started for the door. Before closing it behind him 
he turned and stuck his head back inside. 

“ No good! ” he said. “ Too much awa. Two 
much hula gu ’1. Why you no mally her, Licha’d ! 
She heap good cook.” 

As the door closed Philip said abruptly, “ Amen 
to that, Richard. Why — why don’t you try to 
marry her! ” 

Silence on Richard’s part. He stood motion¬ 
less beside the window. Philip shakily poured out 
for himself a glass of lemonade, drained it, and 
clearing his throat, sat down in his favorite chair. 
He had not meant to say this until an interview 
with Liliha should have procured release from his 
old promise of secrecy. He had come to a deci¬ 
sion. From the moment Helen had spoken ad¬ 
miringly of Pat, he had known that whatever the 
cost to her of hurt pride, of bitterness, he meant 
to insist that Helen be told the truth. But in 
blurting out encouragement to Richard at this 
time he probably had done his own cause harm. 
What was it Helen had said just now about going 
off half-cocked! All his life that had been a fail- 


254 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


ing with him. Whenever he forgot his lawyer’s 
training and followed a first impulse he always 
went wrong. His heart, beating out the seconds, 
measured a silence that he thought would never 
end. 

“ There’s only one answer to that for my 
mother’s son,” Richard said at last. “ I’d have 
to be a conscienceless blackguard knowingly to 
subject any woman to what she went through.” 

Philip moved uneasily. “ I don’t know that 
that answers the question as completely as you 
think. Your father and mother were more fatally 
mismated by temperament than they ever were by 
race. ’ ’ 

“ That complicated things, of course. But that 
wasn’t what I meant. A canker sore of secret 
humiliation — that’s what love and marriage and 
motherhood meant to my mother.” 

“ Humiliation — no, no! ” protested Philip, 
angered. Shallow little Minnie, presuming to 
think she had stooped to her husband, to her son! 
His own part in that marriage came back to him, 
stinging him with the old regret. 

“ That’s not for a moment admitting that I 
believe her feeling justified.” Richard left his 
post by the window and came to sit opposite 
Philip on the davenport. He rested his chin on 
his hand and stared out at the calm monotone of 
the sea. ‘ ‘ I, as a Hawaiian, have my own feeling 
in this matter of race, my own criterion of caste. 
The backward peoples of the world. I used to 
wonder sometimes, over there in the shambles, 


CREPUSCULE 


255 


what yon forward nations really had after all that 
was so darned worth dying for. We Hawaiians* 
had something worth it once—had it a mere cen¬ 
tury ago. The art of happiness—of life. But 
none of you whites was clever enough to see it — 
to realize that we had held on to something that 
you had lost.” 

In spite of his deep sympathy for Richard, 
Philip could not repress an ironical smile at this. 
So he and old Gregory had spoken together, right 
here in this room. Only what was Richard’s view¬ 
point now had been his own philosophy then. 

Richard caught the smile and shrugged. 

“ You’re thinking of the reverse side of the 
medal, like all the whites. Always you saw our 
sins only—glaring enough, I admit, but pretty 
well matched by some you brought and grafted on 
us. You never could see behind our idolatry and 
lust. You couldn’t see that we were at peace with 
ourselves, living in a simple, beautiful un-self¬ 
consciousness. We were nature and she was us.” 

Upon Philip’s memory there flashed a vision of 
a young swimmer in the dawn, flashed; faded; 
blurred into Liliha old, bitter, intriguing. 

“ We had held that for you throughout all the 
centuries since humanity had its beginning on 
earth, and you thought it worthless. Took it from 
us and threw it away. In its place you gave 
us greed, ambition, jealousy, hypocrisy — the 
trader’s creed. For trade was your real mission¬ 
ary here. The Christianity you brought us was 



256 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

soiled and tattered, something yon no longer 
placed all your hope in yourselves.” 

True enough that! The first gospel to reach 
the backward peoples was always the gospel of 
greed. Nevertheless- 

“ Do you think, Richard, that the Hawaiian 
people under the most favorable conditions could 
have held a place in the complex modern world? 
Could the Indians? Wasn’t their submergence 
inevitable? ” 

“We don’t know,” Richard said grimly. “ We 
never can know now, for you whites have left us 
only conjecture for all our argument. Never an 
explorer or a conqueror among you was big 
enough to study us — to understand us — before 
he corrupted us with civilization’s worst. I used 
to wonder sometimes, as I crouched in the 
trenches there night after night, thinking about 
all the things I’d meant to do, whether, if you 
hadn’t withered and ruined us, we backward peo¬ 
ples might not have been the hope of humanity 
to-day. You smile at that. I would have too, five 
years ago. But are you so sure now that your 
white civilization is going to last? ” 

“ No,” said Philip thoughtfully. “ We’re not 
as cocksure as we once were. We’ve begun to 
question, to doubt. That’s something to the good 
at least—to look forward to the future of the 
human race somewhat, not to concentrate all our 
thoughts upon ourselves.” 

“ Perhaps you believe that religion more and 
more is going to mean just that —not self- 



CREPUSCULE 257 

salvation, but working consciously toward the 
betterment of human life here.” 

“•I do believe that — have believed it for many 
years. Immortality: our surest hope of it lies in 
our children. It ought to be your turn to smile 
now, to hear this from a childless man. None the 
less I believe that in this conception, surely grow¬ 
ing up amongst us, lies the great hope of continued 
supremacy for the white race.” 

“ Ever think that hope might have been 
stronger if you hadn’t wasted your reserves? ” 

“ Reserves? ” 

Richard clasped hands behind his head and 
stared out to sea. 

“ In the old days of history when a civilization 
wore itself out, it stepped back in the ranks and 
strong new wild blood swept into the front lines 
to carry the battle on. Where’s the rejuvenating 
force coming from now? Russia? The East? 
They’re as old in self-seeking as you are your¬ 
selves. Young races. Perhaps I can tell you what 
I mean by a kind of allegory that grew up in my 
mind in the front lines once. It began with the 
everlasting question, would we live to see another 
day? We measured life by the day; morning 
gone, noon gone, would the night break into a new 
day? Suddenly it struck me that days were like 
families — like my family as I’d known it in three 
generations. Myself was the morning — myself 
as a kid, of course — happy just in being alive and 
on earth. My dad was midday — restless, gusty, 


258 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


hot — the self-assertive time. Evening was old 
Grandfather as I’d know him, tired of his own 
life, with anxious eyes on me, watching to see 
what I’d make of my noon. Then it all seemed a 
part of something infinitely bigger, as if the whole 
life of humanity from the beginning was that same 
trinity. We had our dawn back in the Eden days 
before reason taught us to know or distrust our¬ 
selves. Through historical times we’ve been pass¬ 
ing through the heat. Perhaps twilight’s coming 
now. We’re beginning to be tired of the senseless 
scramble and greed, beginning to think of the 
new lives coming, of the future of the human race. 
That’s where the backward peoples should have 
come in. We hadn’t your centuries of self-seeking 
to embitter and exhaust us. We were closer to the 
dawn. But your civilization did for us before we 
got our chance. We’re children still, war chil¬ 
dren— spent and wasted long before our adoles¬ 
cence. That’s the bitter tragedy of the races you 
scorned and crushed. You thought us inferior, 
when for all you know we might have been only — 
young.” 

Richard, rising, paced up and down the room 
and then came to stand, as old Gregory once had 
stood, resting arms on the back of a chair. 

“ Well! ” he said with a short laugh. u We 
can think these things, we people of mixed blood, 
but all this has mighty little to do with the main 
issue: how we stand with you whites. We’re 
living in the world as it is. It doesn’t do the 
under dog much good to try to figure out what 


CREPUSCULE 259 

other mongrel has got his bone. What counts is 
the label the winning cur has tied to him! ’ ’ 

The winning cur! Philip winced, thinking of 
Pat, who out of his war experience had brought 
only dissipation, a restless disinclination for the 
duty that lay closest to hand. And before men like 
Pat, Richard, in the eyes of the unthinking self- 
satisfied white world, would always he accorded 
an inferior place. 

Richard, roving about the room, stopped and 
looked at his watch. 

“ Pretty near time we were off,” he said. “ I’ll 
tell Hori to drive us up the hot part of the road. 
I’ll never forget that you would have trusted her 
to me. That means more than you’ll ever guess. 
But she’s my mother’s kind — my grandfather’s. 
You can see for yourself — it wouldn’t do.” 

He left the room. Philip, after a moment of 
frowning thought, rang the bell for Sing. 

“ Find Mrs. Heath and ask if I may see her, 
Sing.” 

The Chinaman shook his head. “ She go out.” 

“ Not with Miss Helen! ” 

“ No. All ’lone.” 

He would speak to her before dinner, Philip 
resolved. Not another day should go by before he 
told Helen the truth about her parentage. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


LILIHA PLAYS HER TRUMP 

Philip glanced at his watch with a frown. 
“ Helen is late,” he said. 

“ Not very,” Richard responded. “ We could 
hardly expect her much before this.” 

“ How far are you taking us? I begin to regret 
that we sent the car home.’’ Philip glanced about 
at the rugged walls of lava above them, at the wide 
velvet-green slopes sweeping down five hundred 
feet or more to the sea. 

Richard gave him a quick look. “ Not too tired, 
are you? It’s only three miles, and all downhill. 
But if you like we’ll give it up for to-day and Pat 
can drive us all home. ’ ’ 

“ Not on my account. I’m»good for more than 
three miles. I had visions of you and Helen 
making me scale these cliffs. Don’t put it in the 
minx’s head, or she’ll do it yet. A wild bit of 
country, this. I never happen to have taken the 
upper road before.” 

“ It’s only been in three years, they tell me.” 
Richard came to sit on a rock beside Philip. 
“ Built when they developed the higher part of 
the Haina-Kua land, ~* ; neapple, you know. Ah, 
the car at last! ’ ’ 


CREPUSCULE 


261 


Both men rose. Helen waved at them from the 
bend in the road. The ravishing hat deserved the 
appellation, Philip thought, or at least, the face 
under it did. He had a sudden stir of sympathy 
for Richard. How cruel the child was in her radi¬ 
ance. The visit could not have been the bore she 
had foreseen. Exhilaration had bloomed in her 
since she left. 

Pat, it seemed, was loth to let her go. His pro¬ 
tracted hand-clasp, and the whispered words that 
set Helen’s dimples twinkling enraged Philip. He 
fumed over Richard too, standing like a stick to 
stare at the coast line that stretched so far below. 

“ Come, Helen,” he said impatiently. “ We’ve 
waited for you long enough.” 

Helen sprang from the car at once. “ So long, 
Pat! ” she said carelessly. “ We’ll expect you at 
eight. Don’t dress.” 

‘‘ Eight! ” ejaculated Philip, as the car sped 
away. “ Have you invited that cub to dine with 
me! ” 

“ With us! I did that same. Seems to me if I 
provide the cook I’ve a right to one guest of my 
own! ” She patted his arm. “ Don’t be cross, 
Uncle dearest, the poor fellow is going away.” 

“ That’s news! ” said Richard, turning. “ The 
piker! I thought he had contracted with me for a 
job.” 

“You’re rather horrid about Pat — both of 
you! ” the girl said with flashing eyes. “ He’s 
taking his mother to Honolulu to see an oculist. 
That’s why he’s leaving your old ditch. He asked 


262 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

me, and of course I told him to go. She’s lovely, 
Mrs. Patterson is, not a hit what I’d thought. I’m 
to visit her when she comes hack. Her daughter 
will he here then and we’re going to paint the 
Island red.” She broke off with a laugh. “ How 
grumpy you both look! Poor dears, did I make 
you wait? Where are my shoes, Uncle? You 
didn’t forget? ” 

Richard produced the tennis shoes from a ruck¬ 
sack that he carried. Sitting down on a rock, 
Helen pulled off her white slippers. “ Catch! ” 
she said, and tossed one after another into Rich¬ 
ard’s hands. The sudden tautness of the young 
man’s face as he tucked them into the bag brought 
back to Philip an old agony of his own, packing 
away the dainty dresses and footgear that Lucy 
would never wear again. How thoughtless he had 
been not to take advantage of Richard’s solicitude 
to cancel this excursion. 

Richard, however, appeared cheerful enough as 
he looked up to ask, “ Ready? Then down we go. 
The first minute or two is the worst, until we 
strike the trail.” 

Picking their way down among the undergrowth 
below the road, they emerged on a path somewhat 
overgrown with branches but still clearly defined 
and bearing the marks of long use. 

“ Where does it go? ” Helen asked, gaining 
Richard’s side with a little run and slipping her 
hand under his arm in mute apology for her 
sharpness about Pat. Richard let the fingers rest 
there for a moment only, then stepped away from 


CREPUSCULE 263 

her to break off and hand to her a flowering ohia 
branch. 

“ The trail goes across the mountain,” he said, 
11 hut it has been abandoned since the road was 
built. Rather a shame, I think, to let it go — any 
historic roadway. Many a warrior party went 
over this in the old fighting days B.C., which to us 
Hawaiians means before your precious Captain 
Cook came. ’ ’ He turned back to point his words 
to Philip with a smile, not seeing the odd look that 
Helen gave him at mention of his race. Her color 
deepened and she walked on in silence. Philip 
hoped that she had not felt a rebuff in Richard’s 
avoidance of her hand. She had always been so 
wholly unconscious of the enflaming power that 
might lie in her touch. How different she was 
from the young Liliha in the realization of her 
charm! 

“ There! ” said Richard, stopping. “ This is a 
view that I particularly love. How’s that for a 
little glimpse of earth and sea? ” 

They paused to look down a steep gorge, blue 
with shadows, that opened out far below into a 
surf-flecked bay. Philip lingered after the others 
and walked more slowly on. The old warpath 
brought to mind the fighting ancestors of whom 
Tom had been so proud. Strange that this pride 
in the ancient glory of his family had no part in 
Richard; his was the pride of race itself. To¬ 
morrow ’s children, he had called his people, whom 
civilization had wasted and destroyed. Out of his 
own lifelong sympathy for the scorned peoples of 


264 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


the earth, Philip could respect Richard’s passion¬ 
ate regret for the lost opportunities of his race. 
The beauty, the charm of these people his own 
young mind had early recognized. He remem¬ 
bered how all his life long that first vision of 
Liliha had been indissolubly linked with the 
thought of spring and morning and all the fervent 
joys of youth. 

They were waiting for him. He quickened his 
step. 

u We leave the main trail here,” Richard said. 
“ It’s not always easy to follow this path when 
you get among the trees.” 

For a space they all walked on in silence. They 
were down in deep woods now, arched over by a 
thick canopy of kukui leaves. Twilight had al¬ 
ready gathered here, but a rose glow shone ahead. 
Suddenly a rocky crown rose before them through 
an opening in the trees. Philip’s heart sounded a 
message; it knew before his mind did whither they 
were bound. 

In another moment the clearing opened before 
them, red, not with flaming firelight as he had last 
seen it, but with sunset. The thatched hut was 
gone; no, it had fallen, w T as only a thicker mat of 
ferns. Vines and invading bushes had pressed in 
closer by many yards. But the rock floor of the 
center, the fireplace, the wide proscenium of trees 
and sky, — almost could Philip see Liliha stand¬ 
ing there, flower-crowned, in the barbaric splendor 
of her youth. 

He sank down on a fallen log, the same, — no, 


CREPUSCULE 265 

of course not. That must have rotted to fern-soil 
long years ago. 

“ I might have known,’’ he said stupidly. 
‘ 1 But it was always dark, and we came to it from 
below.” 

Richard turned to him quickly. “ You’ve been 
here? What is the place? I’ve often wondered. 
Not a heiau, of course, nor a Jialau, but it has a 
resemblance-” 

“ It’s nothing historical,” Philip said. “ It’s 
an old — playground of your father’s. He 
brought me here.” 

“ Tell us about it,” Helen urged. She came to 
sit beside him, a careless arm on his shoulder. 

What old emotion made him shrink from her 
caress as from a disloyalty? For the moment his 
flickered-out half-passion for Liliha flared into the 
hot intensity that had scorched him that night 
when he had seen her vanish into the darkness 
with Heath. His rigid body endured Helen’s 
touch for an instant only. Then he took her hand, 
brushed it vhth his lips and laid it down beside 
him. 

“ I can’t, my darling,” he said. “ Old mem¬ 
ories sometimes hurt.” 

Richard, with another quick look at him, called 
Helen’s attention to the fireplace. She went to 
him at once, raising her eyes to his in a grave look 
of understanding that merged Philip’s present 
trouble with the throbbing past. Could fate have 
played a stranger trick than this, to have brought 



266 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

these two together here at such a moment in their 
lives ? 

He must get them away. Whether it was, as his 
confused fancy suggested, that some emotional 
influence from the past hung like a miasma over 
the place, whether it was merely their sympathy 
for him, something had drawn the two close to¬ 
gether in a seriousness that aroused his deep con¬ 
cern. Helen must not see any change in Richard 
before she knew the truth. Else might she have 
bitter memories that no later happiness could 
wholly dispel. 

He rose to his feet. As he did so his eye caught 
a patch of snowy white among the gray rocks at 
the crater’s rim. A white garment — some one 
hidden there! His heart signaled a new dread. 
The strike among the workers had not been 
averted without bitter feeling on both sides. 
Their walk that afternoon had been spoken of 
freely before servants less devoted than Sing. 
Could this mean ambush — revenge? ” 

“ Richard,” said Philip quietly, not moving and 
keeping the ominous white spot well within his 
gaze. “ Will you go on home with Helen now? 
I’d like to stay here for a while alone.” 

“ Sure you don’t want us to wait for you down 
the trail? ” 

“ Quite sure. Don’t worry about me. I’m not 
tired and I know the way down.” 

They left him without further words. Philip 
waited until all sound of their voices had died 
away. Then he said sternly: 


CREPUSCULE 267 

“Come out from behind those rocks. I’m 
armed.” 

The white spot, heaving farther into sight, dis¬ 
closed Liliha, clad in one of the loose holokus in 
which she occasionally took her ease. As she came 
down the rocks toward him, Philip felt all the 
ignominy of a gesture gone wrong. It added to 
his discomfiture to reflect that Liliha knew as well 
as he did that he never carried arms. 

Liliha, however, was not concerned with such 
trifles as his discomfiture. He saw as she ap¬ 
proached him that her eyes blazed in a face that 
was very pale. 

“ You are not playing fair with me, Philip 
Howard,” she said passionately, standing before 
him with clenched hands. “You are not keeping 
faith.” 

“ How so? ” he demanded. No arraignment 
could so have stung him. 

“ Ho you suppose I can’t see your game? You 
want my money — mine, I say — for that pauper, 
Tom Gregory’s son.” 

“ The idea of Helen’s money never entered my 
head, ’ ’ he answered hotly. ‘ ‘ Richard isn’t one to 
live on a woman’s money — he earns his own. 
And besides that, he’ll have mine. Wahainalua is 
his — or will be.” 

Liliha’s face darkened still more. “ So you 
have been plotting to bring them together as I’ve 
thought.” 

“ Nothing of the kind. Until a few hours ago I 
would have shrunk — did shrink — from any 


268 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


thought of their marriage as you yourself would 
have done. But I can’t help seeing what’s coming 
to pass. It’s something stronger than we are, 
that takes no heed of our hopes and plans, some¬ 
thing that is drawing them as irresistibly as 
streams are drawn to the sea. If they love each 
other, Liliha, have we any right to stand in the 
way? ” 

“ I would rather see Helen dead than tied to 
that breed! ” Her voice shook with passion, her 
hands tore at the fern fronds that brushed against 
her, ferns growing from the spot where Tom had 
lain that night in his royal panoply. 11 Twenty 
years of my life have gone to make Helen what 
she is to-day. Shall I throw away those years 
when success is right under my hand? ” 

“ Success! ” he said bitterly. “ Success in 
what? Have you forgotten what urged you to 
make the sacrifice? You wanted to save Helen 
from the unhappiness that had wrecked her 
mother and yourself. Can’t you see that your 
success now may mean for Helen just as disas¬ 
trous a wreck? ” 

“ Wreck! What are you talking about? ” 

“ You want Helen to marry Pat. You are 
urging her to it by every devilish pressure at your 
command. And Pat is a dissolute weakling, a 
Kingsley without his talent, a Heath without his 
strength. Let Helen marry him, and you plunge 
her into a hell as black as your own.” 

Liliha shook her head in fierce dissent. “ Pat 
is a man like all men. Perhaps he isn’t as refined 


CREPUSCULE 


269 


and finicky as you. But who wants a milksop ? A 
husband’s sins don’t count for much with a 
woman; she expects them if she is wise. To be 
despised by him — and others — that’s the thing 
that kills.” 

4 ‘ How do you know what will hurt Helen ? ” he 
asked sullenly. “ She hasn’t got your tempera¬ 
ment.” 

“ No — your precious darling! ” she sneered. 
“ She’s finer clay than I am, I suppose you’re 
trying to say. Things hurt her that never get 
through my thick hide. Who’s sheltered her, I’d 
like to know — given her every chance ? Oh, I 
know how little I count with you! ’ ’ she said with 
growing heat. “Ever since she was a baby 
you’ve seen nothing but her side. Always philan¬ 
dering over her — didn’t I see you just now, kiss¬ 
ing her hand? The queen and her retinue! That’s 
what it means to be old — the queen is dead, long 
live the queen! You’ll find that’s not true. I rule 
this roost yet. 1 do, not Helen. Nor you.” 

He uttered a short laugh. “ When have I ever 
tried to rule you, Liliha ? I know better — have 
known myself no match for you these forty years. 
But I think you’re wrong — dead wrong, in this. 
We have no right, either you or I, to deny Helen 
the privilege of free choice in any matter that 
vitally concerns herself. Has your own life been 
such a success that you dare take the responsibil¬ 
ity of shaping hers? Has mine? But we’ve left 
Helen no choice. You are forcing her to take the 
one path that she sees open before her. Isn’t it 


270 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


only fair that she should be told of the other! 
She’s got to know the truth. If you won’t tell her, 
then I will. ’’ 

He heard her catch her breath. Then she said 
slowly, 

“ You promised not to tell without my consent.’’ 

“ I want you to release me from that promise.” 

“ But I refuse. I still hold you to it.” 

“ I shall break it,” he said, out of a long 
silence. “ Helen’s future counts for more than 
my word. Or my life! ” he added grimly to him¬ 
self. Had Liliha’s deadly anger found an instru¬ 
ment to hand, he felt that the secret would have 
gone with him into silence then. 

In the stillness the breath of the night wind 
sighed down from the mountain slope. Dusk had 
fallen, wrapping Liliha in its gloom. She was like 
a ghost in her white quietude. 

“ You speak of fairness,” she said at last, “ of 
right. What right have you, Philip Howard, to 
ruin the work of my old age! You spoiled my 
young life for me, here in this very spot. If you 
had not followed me that night, I should have 
married Tom.” 

He was silent. The reproach cut with a double 
edge. As he had been the instrument of Liliha’s 
fate long ago, so might he be Helen’s evil genius 
now. To spoil a — but had he indeed spoiled 
Liliha’s life! Changed it, at least. Yet the mak¬ 
ing or marring of a life lay not in circumstance 
but in itself. 

“ How could I have done differently, Liliha! 


CREPUSCULE 271 

Tom was a mere youngster, a tool in your hands. 

hat chance did he have, with you and aw a to 
intoxicate him, to come to an open-eyed choice? " 
He tried to laugh. “ Admit, Liliha, you didn't 
give Tom a sporting chance .' 9 

“ He was older than I," she said somberly, 
“ and better armed in the hard and cruel ways of 
men. All the forces that rule society were on his 
side. I had only myself. Yet you didn't think it 
unsportsmanlike to bring Heath with you that 
night — a man against whom, you had heard from 
my own lips, my heart could have no defense." 

“ Liliha! " he cried. “ You haven't believed 
that for all these years! Didn't you know that he 
followed me without my knowledge, against my 
will? Didn't you know that I was furiously jeal¬ 
ous of him — hated him for your sake? Why, I 
loved you then, Liliha — loved you in spite of 
myself. I would have been an easier prey to you 
than Tom could have been if ever you had chosen 
to turn your eyes my way." 

Her laugh came to him out of the dusk, a cruel 
laugh. 

“ But I didn't choose! What did you have that 
I wanted then ? A cautious man — a thinker! I 
wanted a man who made the blood course through 
me — who made me feel! But do you think I 
don't know now that I’d have had a better chance 
for a happy life with either you or Tom than I did 
with Heath? For that reason, Philip Howard, 
I've the right to choose for Helen. I know what 
young passion costs. Do you? " 


272 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


“ No,” he said. 

She stirred from her rigid stand among the 
ferns. Her deep voice took on its softest, most 
mellow note, an echo of the young voice he had 
loved. 

“ We’ll speak of this again,” she said. 
“ Promise me at least that you’ll say nothing to 
Helen without my knowledge.” 

“ I promise,” he said dully, calling himself a 
traitor and a craven in his heart. 


CHAPTER XIX 


TOWARD A NEW DAY 

Dinner was served late that night. At half-past 
eight, when Philip entered the library full of apol¬ 
ogies for his own tardiness, he found Helen alone 
there, curled up in the window corner, chin on 
hand. 

“ What have you done with Pat? ” he asked, 
forcing himself to a cheerfulness that rang hollow 
to his own ears. “ I thought I heard him here.” 

“ He’s out in the garage looking after a tire.” 
All the life had gone out of Helen’s voice. 

“ What’s the matter, my dear? ” Howard 
went toward her. 

“ Nothing.” She rose and drifted away from 
him, farther out of the light. “ Mammy Lil riled 
me a little more than usual. Came into my room 
just now and pawed me till I nearly screamed. I 
always hate her when she’s affectionate.” She 
gave a little laugh and added more naturally, 
‘ ‘ She sounded like the Love Tales of Hoffman on 
a movie theater organ — lots of tremulo, you 
know, and wind to beat the band. ’ ’ 

“ There’s no pretense in her devotion to you,” 
he said grudgingly. To his consternation he saw 
Helen’s eyes fill with tears. 


274 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


“ Helen, my dear-” he said, again starting 

toward her. 

“ Don’t come near me! ” she cried furiously. 
“ Do you want to make me cry! ” 

Presently, when Richard entered the room, she 
still stood at the window, a rigid back turned. She 
took no notice of his coming, but Pat, following 
him a moment later, she received with a smile and 
a gay ripple of talk. 

Philip looked searchingly at Richard. The 
young man’s face was grim. With a gesture 
Philip summoned him out to the hall. 

u What’s the matter with Helen! ” he asked. 
“ Did anything upset her on the way home! ” 

“ Yes,” said Richard, frowning at the floor. 
“ I did. Lost my head. Coming down the moun¬ 
tain she slipped on a loose stone with those 
damned tennis shoes. Not a bad tumble, but it 
gave me a fright. Before I knew it I — had her 
in my arms. She didn’t understand. Took it 
laughing and put her own arms around me — as if 
it had been you. It hurt me like the devil and I 
pushed her away—acted like a fool. Heaven 
knows what she thought I meant by it. She 
hasn’t spoken to me since. — I’m chucking it, 
Cousin Phil. I’ve got to get away.” 

Liliha descended upon them at that moment, a 
regal figure in black velvet. She swept down the 
stairs, carrying her head high. Unlike her usual 
habit, she smiled on the whole company impar¬ 
tially. Since her ill-judged attempt to belittle 
Richard by linking him with herself as a social 



CREPUSCULE 


275 


inferior had resulted only in making Helen his 
champion, Liliha had expressed her venom merely 
by ignoring him. To-night, however, as they went 
out to dinner, she electrified every one by passing 
her hand within Richard’s arm, and piloting him 
to a seat by her side. She included him in her 
general urbanity, but made no effort at sustained 
speech with him until dinner was well under way 
and Sing had left the room. Then she said, smil¬ 
ing at him, 

44 It’s time you and I got acquainted. I know 
it’s my fault that we haven’t before. A ridiculous 
jealousy that I had long ago revived and quite 
absurdly fastened itself on you.” 

44 You knew my mother? ” asked Richard, sur¬ 
prised. 

Helen’s chatter with Pat abruptly ceased. She 
listened intently, looking down at her plate. 

What was Liliha driving at now, Philip won¬ 
dered uneasily. 

44 It was your father I knew,” Liliha said, with 
a gentle sigh for the past. 44 We had a boy-and- 
girl love affair once.” 

44 Indeed! ” said Richard, warily. He shot a 
look at the silent girl opposite him, then lowered 
his own eyes. 

44 I’ve been talking those old times over to-day 
with your cousin,” Liliha continued, leaning a 
meditative chin upon her jeweled hand. Philip 
started guiltily. What was Liliha involving him 
in now? 

44 It’s strange that three of the actors in that 


276 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


old story should be together in this house to¬ 
night,” she went on. il Myself, Philip Howard, 
and Sing.” She had her audience now. Even 
Pat hung upon her words. “ Your cousin was the 
villain. He thought me a designing young person 
and conspired w T ith your grandfather to keep your 
father away from me. But I had a friend at 
court. Sing was houseboy here, and he carried 
letters for us. We arranged for an — elopement, 
and your cousin found it out. We were separated 
and never met again for twenty years. I saw him 
with your mother then,” Liliha sighed again. 
“ How I envied her white skin and her fair hair! 
But jealousy and hatred died in me when I really 
saw her face. She was so unhappy. One read it 
in her eyes. Poor thing. She had her punishment 
for breaking nature’s laws! ” 

“ Thank you for your sympathy, Mrs. Heath,” 
said Richard dryly. “ I remember my mother 
very well — as well, perhaps, as even you would 
have me remember her.” 

Under cover of the long, measuring look that 
passed between them, Helen raised her eyes to 
Richard’s face. Color suffused her cheeks and 
her eyes shone. Young happiness seemed to flood 
into her again on the deep breath that marked the 
turn of her mood. Philip marveled at the change, 
even while he watched her with growing concern. 
It did not surprise him to see her turn to Pat and 
begin to flirt with him outrageously. It seemed 
to him that some force outside herself was bearing 
her along on a rising tide of emotion, such a tide 


CREPUSCULE 


277 


as he had seen, one New Year’s Eve, engulf Liliha 
at the Mare Vista ball. Restlessness burned in 
her, as it had burned in the young Liliha, confined 
to a sewing table while the Rosalie took on freight 
on the eve of her sailing away. 

The impulse that led Helen to play the coquette 
now had nothing to do with Pat. Liliha thought it 
did, so her look of benignant complacency said. 
Richard’s dogged silence hinted the same belief. 
But Philip felt that he knew better. The happi¬ 
ness that had glowed in her had been born of 
some new understanding of the strange Richard 
who had wounded her that afternoon. Pat would 
never touch her now. Unless — the dread of that 
cursed race inhibition surged over Philip anew. 
Suppose passion — either unacknowledged or de¬ 
fied — should sweep her into depths whose cur¬ 
rents she was unable to resist! The wild blood in 
her had never known restraint. No royal tabus 
had hedged about the native women of her ances¬ 
try; no repression had ever ruled the lawless 
instincts of the white men who had been these 
women’s mates. Perhaps Pat was to be feared 
more than ever now, with the wild young Liliha 
insurgent in Helen to-night. 

The dinner drew to a close and they drifted 
back to the library. Liliha seated herself beside 
the lamp. Pat and Helen took possession of two 
chairs in a far corner of the room. Philip looked 
around for Richard. He stood irresolutely by the 
door. 

“I have a notion to take a walk before I turn 


278 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


in,” he said, in response to Philip’s inquiring 
glance. “ You won’t think it rude of me if I slip 
away? I’ll say good-by to you all now,” he added 
to the room at large. “ I ’ll be oft to Haina-Haina 
before any one is up in the morning, I’m afraid.” 

“ So early, Richard! ” Philip, coming toward 
him, hoped that no one else had seen Helen cringe. 
“What difference will it make if you wait till a 
decent hour to start? ” 

“ I want to see what’s been doing this last week. 
— Good night. ’ ’ He shook hands with Philip and 
turned to leave the room. 

“ Richard! ” Helen with outward composure 
crossed to him. “ Have you thought about the 
change I suggested for the dispensary? ” Philip 
saw her clasped hands tighten, heard her mutter, 
“ I’ve got to talk to you before you go.” 

“ I hardly think it necessary,” Richard said 
aloud. 

“ I must! ” she said under her breath. “ I 
must! Will you wait for me outside? ” 

“ Very well,” he answered. “ If you insist — 
Good night.” 

Helen went back toward the chair she had risen 
from. But she did not sit down. Instead, she 
went to the window which stood open to the sea. 
Pat she passed by as if he did not exist. 

“ It’s warm, isn’t it? ” she said, looking out. 

Liliha’s lips tightened to a thin line. “ Very,” 
she assented dryly. “ The room is stuffy. I 
think I prefer the hall myself.” She rose as she 
spoke and passing into the hall, enthroned herself 


CREPUSCULE 279 

in a wicker armchair that stood near the open 
door. 

Philip’s heart went out to Helen. She had the 
girl cornered! Without meeting her challenge 
and facing her opposition, Helen could not go out¬ 
doors. He saw by the flash of Helen’s eyes that 
she knew the battle was on. 

“ What’s the big idea, Helen? ” Pat’s voice 
was aggrieved. “ Standing over there by your 
lone.” He tapped her chair cushion invitingly. 
u Come along and be cozy like we were.” 

Helen walked slowly toward him, but again 
drifted past. She had drawn her eyebrows to¬ 
gether in a frown of intense thought. Suddenly 
a mischievous smile dimpled her face. She held 
out her hand to Pat. 

“ Good night, Pat dear,” she said sweetly, 
“ and bon voyage. I’m beastly tired. I think I’ll 
turn in myself. ’ ’ 

She passed Philip with a light brush of her hand 
against his shoulder and without a word to Liliha 
went directly upstairs. Philip heard her door 
slam, heard the noisy turn of a key in its lock and 
the muffled thud of her tread on the straw-matted 
floor above. 

“ Can you beat it? ” demanded Pat out of a 
stupefied silence. “ And I thought I’d made a 
killing! I swear I did! ’ ’ 

Philip murmured something in response, he did 
not know what. He was acutely alive to the fact 
that some cautious shifting of his furniture was 
going on overhead. 


280 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


Pat gave him a sulky look, and hands in pockets, 
lounged over to the door. “ I’ll be going, too, I 
guess,” he said. “ Don’t bother to come out with 
me! ” he said sarcastically to Philip’s inattentive 
back. “ Good night.” 

Philip stood still, listening. Everything was 
now silent overhead. Moths were flying thick 
around the electric lamp, bumping into the globe 
with soft thuds that distracted him. Mechanically 
he stooped to put it out. As he straightened him¬ 
self, his eye caught sight of a strange drapery 
across the eastern window. It moved; it was 
something outside. He glanced quickly into the 
hall. Liliha was still holding Pat there in talk. 
He stole toward the window, reaching it just as a 
large white object slid past, — Helen, climbing 
down from her window by means of her knotted 
sheets! His fingers pressed hard against his lips 
in the anxious moment that elapsed before he saw 
her spring away into the garden’s obscurity; then 
they beat a little tattoo of triumph against his 
cheek. Closing the blinds over the evidence of her 
escape, he went out into the hall. He grasped 
Pat’s hand now in a fervent good-by. Pat eyed 
him oddly, scowled, and then with a muttered, 

44 Well, every one’s bugs to-night! ” went out to 
his car. 

“ It’s pleasanter on the lanai, Liliha, don’t you 
think? ” said Howard tranquilly, following Pat 
through the door and busying himself placing two 
chairs. 

“I’m satisfied here,” said Liliha grimly. 


CREPUSCULE 


281 


The hall clock chimed the quarter hour, the half, 
and still they sat without a word, one inside, one 
outside the door. 

The house grew very still. At last Philip heard 
the creak of Lililia ’s chair. 11 I’m sroing upstairs 
now,” she said sullenly, and seemed to wait for 
him to come. He smiled to himself. 

“ You can leave the hall light for me,” he said. 
“ Pm much too comfortable here to think of 
sleep.’’ 

A grunt was her only response. He heard no 
other sound, but when he peered around the door 
jamb a moment later the hall was empty. 

His body relaxed. He sighed and let his head 
sink back against the chair cushion. Somewhere 
out in this soft starry night, pulsing with surf- 
beat, he hoped that his two children were to¬ 
gether, fighting out their own fate with what 
weapons that iron-willed woman had left them to 
call their own. Would not passion overbear 
reason — pride — in both of them! Helen, he 
felt, had made her choice, had cast her pride away. 
Could Richard hold out when faced with Helen 
herself? 

Suddenly Philip’s heartbeat quickened. His 
hand closed over the arm of his chair. He had 
caught sight of Helen’s white dress within the 
dusky arch of the trees. She came slowly toward 
the house — alone — walking wearily, with no 
youth in her step. She could not see him in the 
shadow, but the bar of light from the door now 
revealed to him her face, white, expressionless. 


282 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


Should he speak to her, call her to the haven of his 
arms, or let her gain the refuge of her own room, 
believing herself to be unobserved? 

A rustle sounded beside him. He turned 
quickly. Too late to caution her! Liliha stood in 
the lighted arch of the door. 

“ Where have you been? ” she demanded, her 
voice vibrant with fury. “ Where have you been 
this time of night? With that beggar of a 
Kanaka? 99 

Helen threw back her head. “ How dare you 
speak so ? What right have you to question me at 
all? ” Her voice was shaken by a fury no less 
deep than Liliha’s own. 

“ Right! ” Liliha’s voice was almost a scream. 
Civilization had fallen from her. She was old 
Hana, spitting out abuse on the alien child of her 
own blood. “ You say that to me! 71 She started 
forward, her hand outstretched to grasp Helen’s 
arm. „ 

The girl threw herself back, fended her off with 
passionate hands. 

“ Don’t touch me! ” she cried. “ I’ll never 
endure your hands on me again. ’ ’ 

Liliha’s working mouth snarled back over her 
teeth. “ Dainty little body mustn’t be touched by 
my black hand! Precious little white body! Do 
you know who gave it to you ? Do you know who 
nourished it — gave it the luxury of a queen? I 
did — I, your own grandmother, you damned little 
white snob! ’ ’ 

“ Grandmother! ” Helen clasped both hands 


CREPUSCULE 


283 


over her eyes. Her tense fingers seemed to grope 
for blurred memories that might refute the word. 
She threw out her hands in a gesture of bewilder¬ 
ment, looked to Liliha’s face to search the evidence 
there. “It isn’t true — it isn’t true!” she 
whispered. 

Liliha, with a vicious laugh, folded her arms 
across her panting bosom. “ Ask him! ” she said, 
with a contemptuous shrug of her body toward 
Philip. 

“It is true, Helen,” he said quietly. “ She is 
your grandmother. There’s more Hawaiian in 
you than there is in Richard Gregory. ’ ’ 

He could see the fiery woman beside him sud¬ 
denly turn to stone. 

Helen’s arms fell slowly to her sides. She 
looked up at him, the color surging back into her 
face. 

“I’m glad — glad! ’’ she said slowly. ‘‘ I 
thought to-night no power on earth would ever 
make Richard Gregory marry me! ” She 
stretched out her arms with a deep-breathed 
“ Oh! ” of happiness. “ Thank God — thank 
God I know in time! ’ ’ 

She sped from them into the dark. 

“ Stop her—stop her! ” Liliha’s voice was 
barely a whisper. 

“ Stop her! ” echoed Philip. “ Might as well 
try to stop the wind. Thank God, say I, too. 
You’ve flung the child right into Richard’s arms.” 

The minutes seemed interminable. Would she 


284 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 


stand there forever, that woman of stone! What 
thoughts must be hers, knowing that she had 
thrown away the purpose of half a lifetime in one 
moment of jealous rage. At last she gave a deep 
sigh — turned to go in. Then she stopped and 
looked at him, her head thrown back challengingly. 

“ Wahainalua must be Richard’s! ” she said. 

“ I have always intended that it should be,” he 
replied. 

Her hand stroked the polished panels of the 
massive door. 

“ They ought to live here — in this house. It 
has more dignity than Haina-Haina. After all, 
we must remember that Helen’s children will be 
the descendants of kings.” 

She was gone. Philip sank back in his chair, 
smiling grimly to himself. Liliha had shifted 
helm again and was off on her new course. He 
could see her, years hence, bringing up with an 
iron hand those alii children, predestined to a 
royal arrogance! • 

Helen’s children! Peace fell upon him. Would 
they not be beautiful, in body and mind! As 
Helen was above Alice in fineness, as Richard was 
above Tom, so might their children rise above 
them. Old Gregory, with his unhappy eyes, would 
he not now be content! 

The clock chimed again, and yet again. The 
suspense, the brooding stillness of the night 
revived the dread that had tortured him so 
long. The revelation of her dark blood had 
seemed to have singularly little effect on Helen 


CREPUSCULE 


285 


just now; she had welcomed it as sweeping aside 
an obstacle that kept her from Richard’s side, had 
gloried in sharing with him the brown man’s lot. 
Not yet would it dawn on her what she stood to 
lose. A phrase of Liliha’s haunted him. He 
prayed that it might never be Helen’s fate to 
count the flinging away of her white birthright as 
one of young passion’s costs. 

The surge of foreboding ebbed again, left him 
once more at peace and content. Not through 
Liliha would Helen find her new self, but through 
Richard. And though Richard himself had not 
wholly escaped bitterness, he had won through it 
to serenity, to strength. What Helen would feel 
in her new heritage would be not Liliha’s shame 
and self-scorn, but Richard’s earnest pride, his 
belief in the enduring beauty of the brown race. 

At last Richard and Helen were coming toward 
him. He saw them as they lingered in the shadow 
over their lover’s parting. Arm in arm they came 
into the light. 

“ Little rascal! ” said he gruffly. “ How did 
you expect to get back to that room when you 
locked the door inside? ” 

She ran to him with a little cry. He felt the 
grip of Richard’s hand. 

‘ ‘ Don’t worry, ’ ’ he said — the old laughing 
Richard—“I’ll shinny up.” He caught Helen’s 
arm again. “ Good-by, darling! Do I kiss you 
good night here, or at the head of the stairs? ” 

“Both, of course!” said Helen. “Why be 
stingy? ” 


286 A DAUGHTER OF THE DAWN 

Philip was alone again in the velvety darkness 
with the loved companionship of the stars, alone 
with the memories that henceforward would make 
up the poignancy of his life. Henceforward! It 
seemed to him that all the years since Lucy had 
died had been like that, — a looking back. He 
wished with deep longing that his life might have 
been different. Suppose he had married Liliha — 
he winced again at her scorn of him that after¬ 
noon — a man who could not make her feel! But 
suppose that, long ago, he could have stripped 
himself of the nicer qualities of mind that had 
repelled her; could have revealed to her how even 
in his absorbing grief the resurgent youth in him 
had leaped in response to unconscious youth in 
her. Suppose — he smiled to himself at this — 
suppose he had told her what always it had been 
a secret satisfaction to know she had never 
guessed, that he had seen her, the nymph, at play 
alone in the sea; had told her how profoundly her 
young beauty had stirred the elemental, emotional 
Philip whom always, rigidly, he had held re¬ 
pressed. The simple revelation of her life- 
quickening power over him, he saw now, might 
easily have turned her vagrant fancy his way* 
Marriage might have been his, then, children, 
grandchildren of his own, instead of a barren 
descent into a childless old age. Not barren, of 
course; he quickly corrected himself with a sense 
of disloyalty; but, they would be the first to admit 
it, not even Helen’s and Richard’s devotion could 
mitigate the fact that he could claim no descend- 


CREPUSCULE 


287 

ants of his own. Strange that the very qualities 
in him that made him most susceptible to all that 
was beautiful and rare and fine in life had in all 
probability caused the extinction of his family 
with himself. 

For long he sat there in the soft darkness, then 
with a sigh rose to go indoors. But the night still 
held him. He strolled down the steps into the 
scented garden, out to the road, and along it to a 
bench on a point whence he could catch the faint 
glimmer of surf. The Islander’s birthright; some 
day Helen’s children would be sporting there with 
surf boards, venturing farther and farther out 
into the welcoming sea. Lithe young swimmers 
like the Liliha he had first known, — Liliha who 
now was old, vanquished, who had lived her life 
and was waiting only- 

No, not vanquished! Suddenly he saw her, not 
consumed by years or by life or by the uncontrol¬ 
lable fire within her; saw her triumphant. Wild 
young passion, cold ambition, fierce jealousy of 
age! What power had these to harm the superb, 
indomitable thing that was Liliha herself? They 
were the storm clouds, beating their fury out 
against her. She was the fire-mountain, mysteri¬ 
ous, inviolate — the mother-force, greater than 
individual, greater than race, itself immortal 
youth. 

He looked up from his long brooding. The 
stars were gone. Already on the white breast of 
the mountain he could see the glow of Liliha’s 
new day. 




































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U.S.S. MAYFLOWER. 

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